


Tontine

by FJBryan



Category: The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: Background Relationships, British Military, First Kiss, First Time, London, M/M, Military Background, Military Backstory, Military Training, Orphans, Repaying Debt, Sleeping Bag Sex, Welsh Character, Wilderness, tontine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:34:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23241058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FJBryan/pseuds/FJBryan
Summary: [Follows the episode Wild Justice]Bodie learns he is the last surviving member of his SAS tontine and takes temporary leave from CI-5. On leave with Bodie, Ray learns more about Bodie's military comrades and his training and journeys with him to the Brecon Beacons in Wales.With thanks to krisserci5, hagsrus, and cyanne for careful beta work!
Relationships: William Bodie/Original Character(s), William Bodie/Ray Doyle
Comments: 14
Kudos: 28
Collections: 2018





	Tontine

The letter arrived at Cowley’s office with the morning post. Freddie, the night watchman, had the job of sorting mail for all personnel after the bomb detection unit had given every envelope a thorough going over. Once Freddie had taken out items addressed to “CI5 Controller,” “Major Cowley,” or “Chief of Staff, CI5” and passed them on to Betty, he was usually left with very little to dispose of: cranks, threats, mysteries, junk. Most of it went to the file room—nothing that might prove useful in the end was ever binned outright—and the rest went straight to the furnace. But there was the occasional letter that turned up, addressed not to Cowley, or written by a lunatic bomber, that merited attention. This letter was one of those.

It came with a respectable return address: the firm of Jackson, Tate, and Mason, Solicitors, of Stonington Cross, Herefordshire, addressed to one W. A. P. Bodie, c/o CI5, London. Freddie had never heard of the firm, but a phone call put that straight—yes, a letter had been dispatched to Mr Bodie two days earlier. Yes, the letter would have the following appearance and yes, it would be typed with the uppercase “A” slightly above the centre line because that’s how Miss Brook’s machine typed the letter “A”. Convinced that it posed no obvious threat, Freddie entered it in the Mail Received ledger, and passed the envelope to Bodie the next time the man came through CI5’s secure entrance.

Which just happened to be when he and Doyle were coming off a long stint in the surveillance van parked outside a Mayfair address for three days. Hard-pressed to find a chip shop in the neighbourhood or any food that wouldn’t have emptied their wallets in record time, they’d been reduced to waiting for Murphy to deliver them midnight rations of nearly-squashed sandwiches and lukewarm tea. After three days, even Cowley believed in a hygienic change, so Bodie and Doyle returned to HQ when Lucas and McCabe relieved them at a quarter to dawn. Hungry, sleepy, wanting only to file their reports and stumble home to their respective beds, Bodie was a little surprised when Freddie caught his arm and pressed the letter into his hand. Knowing that nothing got past CI5 security without a double vetting, Bodie ripped open the envelope and took out a rather official-looking letter as the two men trudged upstairs, victims once again of a non-functioning lift.

“Tax demand? Forget to pay the television license?” Doyle joked, as they thudded into heavy chairs facing typewriters and stacks of blank forms yet to be filled in. Once they got the paperwork done, it would be clear sailing with forty-eight hours off: they had the old man’s word on it. Doyle looked over the top of his typewriter, expecting to see Bodie rolling the carbons into his machine with a witty comeback at the ready, but the man wasn’t moving. Dangling the letter from one hand and lost in thought, Bodie was off with the fairies again. He’d been that way for a few weeks. Doyle would look over and see Bodie physically present but mentally AWOL, and he covered for him. He knew the reason why. Ever since they’d pulled King Billy and his gang in for murder. Ever since the blown and then nearly-perfect assessments which put them out on the streets again. Bodie might have fooled Cowley into thinking everything was all right, but he couldn’t fool his partner. Losing Williams cut deep, a lot deeper than Bodie was willing to admit.

Now this letter. And no answer, though Bodie put it to one side, still looking blank, rolling the forms around the platen and setting to work like a typing demon. Must be a special hell for SAS sergeants that they learn to type so fast. Doyle had never got the hang of it, not even after years of filling out forms at the Met. He might start well before his partner, but Bodie always finished first, and it was no different this time either. While Doyle was still cleaning up “tow visitors Wendesday 9an and 2om: milk flosy, port” to read “two visitors Wednesday 9am and 2pm: milk float, post” Bodie was yanking his forms out of his typewriter, sailing towards the door and the inbox on Betty’s desk. Doyle banged out the last two paragraphs and was yelling for Bodie to wait while he did the same. The letter and envelope were gone from Bodie’s desk too, but Doyle expected that. Yet in Betty’s office, there was only 3.7’s report—no 3.7.

He caught up with his partner at their lockers, Bodie stripping out of clothes that could probably walk away on their own after three days. He hadn’t been sure whether Bodie would shower here or at his flat, but the fastidious man obviously couldn’t be shed of the surveillance van’s smell fast enough. Towel cinched around his waist, he was turned toward the door, waiting for Doyle to join him. Trainers off, jeans, pants, and socks dumped in a few seconds, and Bodie was flicking a clean towel at him while he was still levering the holster off his shoulders: direct hit. Promising retaliation to Bodie’s disappearing backside, Doyle peeled off the shirt and holster and shoved them in a locker, then padded after Bodie into the tiled room and began removing the last clues to how they’d spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Doyle had this part down to a science. He took the shower on the opposite wall from Bodie’s, so that when he turned the water on or off, he couldn’t see the man, even from the corners of his eyes. It gave him some breathing room. If he’d known Bodie was planning a shower, he might not have yelled at him to wait—it was hard enough keeping himself under control when he was lumbered with the bastard for days on end and no one else to talk to. It had been like that for years now, and Doyle had taken to avoiding a shower at HQ if he knew Bodie was planning one. 

He could still remember the first time he’d seen Bodie naked, years before. They’d crawled around in the mud of that farmhouse all night, and after the 5am raid, they’d needed to sluice the muck off themselves or risk ruining the car—and incurring the wrath of CI5’s carpool manager. It was Bodie who found the shower off to the side of the milking pens and put it to good use, the one built for a farmer to keep filthy boots and dirt out of a clean house. Bodie tested the water, found it ran clean and cold, and that was enough for him: he’d been peeling off layers, baring skin rapidly as he dumped the ruined shirt and cords in a pile. Doyle had arrived just in time to see Bodie turn from the wall with its taps to facing the door: water plastering down his hair, blinding him for a moment as the torrent rinsed away dirt and death and narrowly missed cowpats, and it had been a revelation. Bodie’s body in all its glory was a thunderclap to Doyle’s senses, drowning out everything he’d known before and leaving him stunned, senseless in that doorway.

Bodie might be the one who was wet, but it was Doyle who felt like he was suddenly underwater, immobilized, the world turned suddenly unfamiliar. His very skin felt wrong, overheated. Blood seemed to be thundering through every vein in his body, heartbeats ringing in his ears. All Doyle could do was stare, his partner’s body the only thing he could see. What on earth was wrong with him? 

Then Bodie’s eyes opened, he laughed that laugh of his and dared Doyle to join him under the cold spray. The spell broken, Doyle made some glib reply about getting a set of dry clothes out of the car boot before he intended to strip off, or had Bodie forgotten and was planning to go back to headquarters starkers? Bodie’d laughed again, and Doyle forced himself outside, leaning heavily against the first wall that presented itself before weak legs could betray him. Even breathing seemed hard work, but Doyle got himself to the car and back again as fast as his dazed senses allowed, and found himself praying that Bodie had located a towel by the time he returned. Another glimpse of that black hair arrowing towards his partner’s groin, the darkened flesh hanging between his legs, and Doyle wasn’t sure he could keep from doing something stupid. 

Why it hit him so hard, he couldn’t say, but Ray knew that the world would stay upside down no matter what he did. In the meantime, Doyle put on his best undercover face and went back to the showers with their spare kit bag of clean clothing. He opened the door, and there was Bodie, looking like a stack of towels: one on his head, one around his shoulders, and one tidily wrapped around his waist. He caught the clothes Doyle pitched at him one-handed, gestured to the stack of waiting towels he’d found for Doyle’s use, and stood there, expecting to see Doyle strip off and do likewise. 

Which he did. How he managed it while keeping his hard-on where Bodie couldn’t see it was a feat Doyle wasn’t sure he could repeat. But what Ray had taken to calling “the Cow Shed Revelation” in the privacy of his own mind explained why (for the past two and half years) when he'd showered at HQ, he’d always taken the shower on the opposite side from Bodie’s. Standing opposite his partner, Ray didn’t have to look at him, or even glance at him accidentally, or not so accidentally. It was essential that he not get a hard-on when they took showers, though how to avoid doing so required some fancy footwork or a painful rush of cold water. Doyle’s standard ploy was to shower in the privacy of his flat, but that wasn't possible today; having yelled at Bodie to wait for him, he could hardly refuse to follow him into the shower. This business of being undercover around his partner was exhausting.

If avoidance wasn’t possible, Ray fell back on strategy number two: distraction. “What about that letter Bodie? What’s it all about?” He wasn’t sure what kind of answer he’d get, but if it put his partner off the scent, so much the better. Too bad his hearing was sharp. The intake of Bodie’s breath was audible, even with running water. It made him do the unthinkable, the guaranteed-to-turn-him-on-in-five-seconds act: Doyle turned around so he could look at Bodie, wet, naked, and facing him.

The Adam’s apple in Bodie’s throat was working up and down, no words coming out. Finally, he spoke, but the words didn’t make things any clearer. “I’ve got to take some leave, Ray. Be back in a week, ten days tops. I’ll need to clear it with Cowley, but I think he’ll agree.” Then Bodie was back to the three-men-in-a-tub routine, soap and water running down his shoulders, his back, his arse, and Ray stood there, open-mouthed, wondering. 

His shower forgotten, Doyle asked, “Is it family?” He couldn’t think of anything that would take Bodie away from CI5 save that. Though from what little he’d been told of Bodie’s family, he couldn’t conjure any reason that would get Bodie back to Liverpool except at gunpoint. For the first time in years, no hard-on threatened—his impending sense of loss had overridden desire as he stood there awaiting a reply. For just a moment, there was fear in the pit of Ray Doyle’s stomach—fear that wherever Bodie went, he couldn’t follow. 

A snort of derision put paid to that misconception. “Not the way you mean.” Bodie rinsed away the last of his shampoo and soap and turned off the taps before facing his partner again. “My old mob. Unfinished business.” And with Doyle standing there dumbstruck, Bodie steered him under the water and washed off the last of the dirt and soap clinging to Doyle’s forearms. Only the words “unfinished business” kept Doyle from grabbing him then and there to force the truth out of him. 

Instead, as Doyle dried himself minutes later, deliberately not-watching-Bodie as he found clean dry things in his locker, he heard himself saying, “You take leave, then so do I. If it’s unfinished, you’ll need me.” Back turned to his partner, he missed the flush in Bodie’s cheeks, the almost reflexive shake of the head to deny him. He didn’t see the bleakness in Bodie’s eyes as they watched Doyle’s back, slipping on shirt and holster and rechecking his firearm, and only barely heard him reply, “We’ll see what Cowley says.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Bodie asked Doyle to wait outside Cowley’s office, so he did. It was a rare thing, to sit there without his partner beside him, and it made him wonder all the more what this request for leave would provoke from their boss. They hadn’t had decent leave since forever, and he’d been looking forward to forty-eight simple hours off—the prospect of getting a week or even more from the Cow seemed farfetched in the extreme.

He’d not reckoned on Bodie’s persuasive abilities. The door opened after only five minutes, and his partner cocked his head inward, the wordless “get in here” transmitted with his shrug. At his desk, Cowley looked from Bodie to Doyle, then took off his glasses, holding them above the folder in front of him. He looked displeased, speaking as if he regretted his decision already. “You’re fortunate nothing big’s brewing just now. Your request for leave has been approved, effective immediately. I’ll need you both back in ten days at the latest: Monday week, 9am. Until that time, Doyle, you are to render Bodie all the assistance he requires.” While Doyle stood there, trying not to gape, Cowley addressed Bodie. “You have only that long to finish this, otherwise it will have to wait until the next time I can spare you both. What you propose to do is foolhardy, 3.7, and likely to cause pain. Take care.” Then to 4.5 he said, “Stay with him, Doyle.” Glasses restored to the bridge of his nose, Cowley looked down at his papers, effectively dismissing them both.

“I’ll call for the names and addresses tomorrow, sir.”

Without lifting his head, the Controller responded, “Aye, 3.7. I’ll do what I can.”

And with that, the two men were back out in the hall, Bodie already striding towards the staircase, leaving Doyle in his wake to begin asking questions. “Where are we going?”

“Hereford.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

As the silver Capri pulled out of the lot, Doyle hazarded a question. “Stonington Cross near Hereford?” Doyle had glimpsed the envelope’s return address that Bodie dropped in the back seat, but still hadn’t worked out what the letter contained. He pulled a map from the glove box and began plotting their route. Yearning for his bed after the weird four-hours-on-four-hours-off surveillance shifts they’d endured for three days, Ray was impressed by Bodie’s ability to see straight, much less drive. Sunlight flashed off cars they passed as Bodie manoeuvred them through morning traffic and onto the motorway.

Bodie didn’t seem surprised Doyle had guessed the town they were heading towards: agents in CI5 were paid to be observant, and his partner was one of the best. He answered, “Five miles away. They’re both a few hours from here.” Then he volunteered, “We’re meeting a man called Jackson to collect a box, go to a bank, then come back to London.” Swinging the car into the flow of traffic on the Great Western Road, Bodie added cryptically, “The first few are here.”

 _Doesn’t sound illegal. Not even dangerous. What’s he up to?_ Doyle looked across at his partner, who seemed focused on the task in hand. Only years of experience told Doyle that Bodie wasn’t looking forward to this meeting: it was all in how tightly Bodie gripped the steering wheel. Driving the M4 wasn't enough to do that to his mate's hands: he could see white bone showing through at the knuckles. Bodie really didn’t want to see this Jackson person. Dozens of questions crowded his mind, but Doyle settled for two. “Do you know what’s in the box?”

“A twenty-eight-year old bottle of Macallan scotch, sixteen envelopes addressed to ‘The Last Bastard’, and a photograph.”

Still puzzled, Doyle followed with, “And at the bank?” 

“Four thousand pounds, plus interest.”

Bodie overtook a slow-moving lorry and when he had slotted the Capri back into the far left lane, risked a glance over at his partner. Doyle’d gone pale and his eyes were a little wild.

“Is this from a bank job you never told me about?” Doyle croaked.

Bodie laughed, the first time all day, and his hands relaxed on the steering wheel. “No bank job, mate. A tontine.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

On the drive to Stonington Cross, Bodie explained how a tontine worked. “It’s a kind of death-pact. Everybody puts money in; the last man alive gets the lot. Plus the bottle of scotch. The scotch is so you can toast each man who died before you in the unit. When you’ve toasted them all, the bottle should be gone.” 

_And you’ll be so drunk you won’t remember your own name. Talk about a guaranteed downer._ No wonder Bodie wasn’t looking forward to this meeting. “So you’re telling me you’ve won the pools, after a fashion.”

“Yeah. Sort of.” Bodie was fitting the car into a narrow space along the high street of Stonington Cross. The solicitor’s office was a few blocks away. “Every man in our mob thought he’d win it.”

Doyle would never do something like this, but he understood why Bodie might: it was just the sort of ridiculous macho bet military men would get a huge laugh out of. _Probably laughed hardest when the bullets were flying, too._ Then a question occurred to him.

“How does this Jackson fellow keep track of who’s still alive? What if one of your mob pops up alive in Switzerland next year, says he decided to get away from it all?” Doyle was looking at the store windows as they walked along the pavement, but really he was watching Bodie in their reflections.

“Doesn’t work that way. The army has dealt with tontines since Wellington’s time; they practically encourage it—fight to the last man, all that rot. Some get started at military academies like Sandhurst, others just before a big op. Must’ve been dozens before D-day. If a unit registers a tontine, each time a man stops drawing his pension or pay the central records office notifies the solicitor holding the tontine’s money in escrow. He crosses another name off the list.” 

_And as of six months ago, there were only two names left on your mob’s list: Williams and Bodie. Until King Billy._ “What happens if you all go at once? Re-enact the Charge of the Light Brigade?” 

“They interview doctors and nurses, if they have to. It goes to the last man still drawing breath.” Bodie was beginning to sound a little more like himself, the streak of cocky arrogance returning to the fore. He stopped in front of a nondescript office and rang the bell. “And that would be me.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The paperwork was surprisingly brief. Jackson, Tate, and Mason had handled tontines for decades, possibly as a result of their proximity to training grounds for the military. A routine check of identity—made easier by the photograph in the box itself—and Mr Jackson handed over the authorization forms needed by the bank, the box created by Bodie’s squad, and made himself scarce. 

When the door closed behind him, Doyle turned to face his partner, who had the box’s contents spread before him on the table. It was indeed as Bodie had predicted: a twenty-eight-year-old bottle of scotch, sixteen envelopes, and a photograph. He barely caught the words Bodie said.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this soon.”

He didn’t need that one explained to him. The Last Bastard shouldn’t have showed up to collect for another twenty or thirty years, if that. Doubtless the scotch would taste very fine indeed with another thirty years of waiting. But in 1980? That meant the box had only been shut eight years, since Bodie joined the SAS. Doyle reached for the photograph, but Bodie’s hand stopped him. 

“You don’t know their names.”

“I will when you tell me.” Doyle’s fingers curled around the corner of the snap and pulled it over. He found Bodie, front and centre—where else?—dressed in camo gear and war paints, all teeth and eyes staring back at him from the past. So young, and sexy as hell, even then. He swallowed down the attraction, willed himself to feel nothing, to be nothing but a supportive friend. Then Doyle looked up, found Bodie watching him. “What now?”

“Now? Collect the money and get out of here. Head back to London.”

They gathered up the bottle, envelopes, and photograph, then made for the office door, Doyle trailing and still a bit unclear about something. He asked, “So what will take ten days? We could have done this in a few hours, no sweat.” 

Bodie turned round to face him and replied grimly, “You may wish you were back in that buggy-boo before it’s all over, Ray. We’ve got a lot of widows and orphans to talk to.” Then he walked out of the office, leaving Doyle dumbstruck for the second time in one day.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The bank manager was thoroughly helpful, though initially a bit confused by Bodie’s request for fifteen envelopes with £250 stuffed in each one. The remainder of the money required a larger brown envelope, stamped with the bank’s name on the outside: the manager told them there was nearly £4500 in the account he’d just closed, and he looked a bit glum at the prospect of all those notes walking out the door with no hope of them returning. After they’d gone through the accounting at the manager’s discreetly placed desk, Bodie took the envelopes, passed the larger brown one to Doyle, and they were back in the Capri before Doyle could fashion his next question. “You planning to give the money back?”

Bodie edged the Capri onto the M4 and gunned the engine a little, as if glad to be shot of the town in his rear view mirror. “Yeah.”

The words were spoken before Ray could think better of them. “They won’t thank you. Might hate any reminder, in fact.”

“I know. Can’t help it.” 

“So we’re gonna track down fifteen sets of widows and orphans…”

“Or grieving parents, girlfriends…”

“Give them £250 each and say what, exactly? Cheerio?”

Bodie took a deep breath, eyes not really intent on the cars he was passing. He’d obviously given this some thought. “Your son lent me some money, and I’m returning it now. I wish he were alive to give it to in person. I’d much rather have him alive.”

“Shove the envelope into their hands and walk away?”

“Yeah.”

“Not explain about the tontine?”

Bodie shot him a look as if to say ‘are you mad?’ and carried on driving. “No.”

Considering for a moment, Doyle realized that this was probably a good thing. “Who first?”

“Cheryl.”

Williams’s girlfriend, still in protective custody until the King Billy trial. “But she’ll know—she’ll know he didn’t lend you the money. You’ve had weeks before this to tell her.”

“Right.” The knuckles on the wheel tightened, and Doyle wished the words unsaid. 

“So you’ll have to tell her the truth.”

Bodie nodded and gave the silver Capri an extra burst of speed.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

On next-to-no-sleep and a six-hour drive behind him, Doyle was ready to drop when they returned to London. But before leaving Ray off at his flat, Bodie issued a few brusque instructions: “Pack a bag: regular stuff, plus one set of good clothes, and kit for sleeping outdoors.” Doyle had no idea what Bodie intended, but jacket, tie, and clean shirt joined his usual stack of jeans and t-shirts in an untidy pile on the ottoman before he fell into bed exhausted. After a dreamless sleep, he'd barely jammed the lot into two bags when his partner collected him early the next morning, the two men moving wordlessly through coffee and mumbled hellos. Just before he closed the flat door, Ray remembered to grab his sleeping bag and camping gear out of the hall closet. Bodie stowed all the bags in the boot, and they were on their way to only Bodie-knew-where.

Judging by the way the Capri worked eastward, it seemed to be some place near Whitechapel. Bodie said nothing, just manoeuvred the car through rush hour traffic with stoic calm. Doyle knew the girl they were going to see was in a safe house, though he didn't know which one. Cowley must have told Bodie where to find her.

The WPC who answered the door double-checked their IDs and wisely called it in to her supervisor before she let Bodie and Doyle enter. The house was just another nondescript house in a long terrace in Bethnal Green, but it had protected witnesses before and it would keep them safe in future, as long as proper procedures were followed. Doyle even thanked her for being cautious. “She’s an important young woman,” she explained needlessly. “Saw a murder.” 

He nodded, saying nothing, following Bodie into the kitchen where Cheryl sat, nursing a cold cup of tea. He could see Bodie square his shoulders, preparing for a job he didn’t want and couldn’t avoid.

“Hullo, Cheryl.”

“Hullo, Bodie.” She looked up, giving them a forlorn little smile. Her glossy red hair fanned down onto her shoulders, but it didn't brighten her appearance much. “Brought your mate, ‘ave you?”

“Yeah.” He took a seat across from her, pulled out the envelope, slid it to the middle of the table, next to the teapot. He’d scrawled “Williams” on it in his usual spiky handwriting. 

At that moment, watching Bodie gather his strength to tell a horrible story of youthful dreams and lost friends, Doyle wished he could do it for him. Wished he could send Bodie back to HQ, wished the money into hell, wished the families of these men into oblivion—anything so that Bodie didn’t have to do this. It was part of that military brotherhood Ray didn’t belong to, couldn’t understand, and didn’t want to know. Yet it was part of Bodie, part of the man’s very core, and if Ray wanted Bodie the way he thought he did, then he needed to be here, understand, witness this happening. It was nothing less than courage, unflinching in the face of pain, and it was a key to Bodie’s soul.

The words came slowly, haltingly at first, but he heard Bodie end it with, “Keith didn’t have any family but you. Told me that when he joined up—no parents, no brothers or sisters. Guess that’s why he and I got on so well. Anyhow, he’d have wanted you to have this. I just wish he were here to take it himself.” The tense jaw betrayed how hard each word spoken was for Bodie. By the last few words, his Scouse accent was coming through full force.

Cheryl sat there, staring at the envelope. She didn’t touch it. “It’s blood money.”

Bodie shook his head. “No. It’s not. He made a bet with fortune, we all did. I don’t like how King Billy changed his odds.” He stood up, moving back to flank Doyle in the doorway. “When the trial is over, Cheryl, use this to make a new start. Keith’s gift to you.” And he turned for the front door, but not before Doyle saw a trace of moisture gathering in his eyes.

He slung an arm over Bodie’s shoulders as the pair made their way out of the house, past the watching, silent police constable, back to the car. _The bravest man I know. No wonder I love you._

Safe inside their world again, Bodie started the Capri, all business, heading south across the river this time. The glint of unfallen tears was gone now, and the hard man 3.7 was back in charge. Doyle watched, marvelled.

“Where we off to now?” he found himself asking as they drove through the Rotherhithe Tunnel.

“See a man with a junk yard.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Not much to see in Bermondsey, unless abandoned warehouses and weed-choked lots gave a thrill. That probably explained why Cowley arranged drops and handoffs there on a regular basis, but this was a part of Bermondsey Cowley hadn’t sent them to before, a place where marginal businessmen hung on by their fingertips and streetwalkers offered temporary forgetfulness. Down one rough-looking street after another, then Bodie pulled the Capri through a chain link fence opening and parked the car in the scrapyard's muddy centre. As they got out, Doyle scanned the piles of twisted metal that reached up to the sky, blocking out trees, blocking out every indication of a city around them. Rusting wrecks of cars, stacked seven and eight high like columns in a cathedral, rising in every direction, a jumble of metal and decay mixed with a deafening screech coming from the scrapyard's far end. A car was being crushed. 

“Jennings always said he joined the SAS to save his hearing. Now I know why,” Bodie offered, then looked over at Doyle, the curl to his partner’s lips letting him know Bodie’s black sense of humour was still intact, despite the task ahead. 

“Had a knack with motors, I bet,” Doyle replied, looking at the cars piled in heaps around them. 

“Man could conjure spark plugs out of thin air. Got us out of more than one jam, he did.” Bodie’s face was grim now. “His father’s ex-Paras. He’ll know if I try to fob him off with some story of a long-forgotten loan from Mike to me.”

“So it’ll be like Cheryl.”

“Worse. He’s likely to punch me in the mouth. If he tries it, let him.”

Doyle’s eyebrows went up a fraction, but the look he gave Bodie said that he was letting his partner call the shots on this operation. _Anything for you, mate._

The two men walked into the ramshackle shed at the centre of the yard, a grimy office where a man in oil-stained coveralls greeted them. Mike Jennings’s father could have been a prize fighter in his prime, and he wasn’t taking any guff about a loan being repaid. He looked at the envelope in Bodie’s hand, then up into dark blue eyes, but he didn’t raise a fist, just let Bodie drop it on the desk, forgotten. For a moment he’d thought about flattening Bodie, if the bunched muscles underneath the coverall were anything to judge by. Instead, Jennings reached beneath the battered desk, pulled out a bottle of scotch and three well-used glasses, and poured them each two fingers of the fiery liquid.

Junkman and mechanic he might be, but there was shrewdness in the eyes of old man Jennings. Handing the glasses around, he said to Bodie, “So you’re the Last Bastard. Never thought I’d meet one in the flesh.” The way he said it, Doyle realized the term must be traditional, and made him wonder if the old man was in a tontine himself.

“Never thought I’d be one,” came Bodie’s swift retort. “Not with the jungles I’ve lived in.”

Jennings gave Doyle a thorough looking over, and said bitingly, “If he’s watching your back now, you may be shuffling off this mortal coil sooner than you think.”

Before Doyle could feel insulted, Bodie laughed out loud. “He’s the reason I am the Last Bastard. I’d be dead ten times over if it weren’t for him. That one’s hard to kill,” he said, head jerking in Doyle’s direction.

Jennings gave Doyle another hard look. “What’s his speciality?” As if Doyle were incapable of speaking for himself.

“Handguns. Best I ever saw. And he’s like a cabbie with The Knowledge; isn’t a back street or alley in London he can't find.” Bodie raised the glass, cutting off further talk. “To Mike.”

The three men toasted the dead soldier, drank off the scotch, and put the glasses back on the worn desktop amidst the rubble of a working life. Then Bodie looked at Jennings one last time, sombrely. For a moment, he did nothing, finding the still, fixed centre that had become second nature sometime in his soldier’s past. That calm resolution, Doyle thought, was like seeing the perfect blade, forged from raw steel by a master craftsman: pure, strong, fine. He had no idea what Bodie would say, but he knew it would be true.

“You never forget a man who saves your life. I’ll remember Mike until the day I die.” Envelope already delivered, Bodie didn’t waste time with “goodbye” or “thanks for the drink,” but turned and began striding rapidly to the car. Doyle spared Jennings one last glance, saw the man's face about to crumple, and took off after Bodie.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

One last encounter, this time at a smoky bar up on Finchley Road, a neighbourhood rapidly giving way from working class to gentrified. Doyle wondered what would become of this place once the transformation was complete in another year or two. The subject they sought this time was a mother—“Shorty Thompson’s Ma”—who apparently hustled at the Pig and Whistle. “Though your lot may have her down the station if she’s still anything to look at,” Bodie mentioned as they hunted for a parking place. How Shorty met his end was greeted with a curt reply: “Shorty died after Mike. Belfast.” There were few patrons in the bar as they entered.

Shorty’s mum apparently had given up streetwalking for pulling pints, though Doyle could see she had once been pretty before ten thousand men crossed her palm with silver. “And what’ll you be having today?” she asked the pair, her hand already on a pint glass. 

“Whatever you’re having, luv, and one for yourself while you’re at it,” Bodie replied, a quick smile sent in her direction. Another envelope labelled “Thompson” was already in his palm beneath the bar, waiting.

The pint glasses didn’t come out. Instead, three tiny sherry glasses with a tot in each one landed on the bar, and Bodie passed her a crumpled note, dropping the larger envelope marked “Thompson” on the bar. She didn’t notice, just said, “Cheers, guv,” and took half her glass with a single swallow. Doyle watched the folds of skin around her neck shift and move with the drink, wondering how Bodie would get through this one.

Like a bulldozer, apparently. “I was a mate of Shorty’s, name’s Bodie. We were in Ireland together.” That should tell her enough, and it did. Her glass thumped down on the bar, a few drops sloshed over the top. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion and Bodie leapt in before she could jump to any conclusions. “I borrowed some money off him, didn’t have enough to pay him back at the time. He said you’d be here until the Thames went dry or people stopped drinking. I want you to have it. I just wish I could give it back to Shorty himself. He was a good mate.” Bodie picked up his glass, and Doyle joined him, remembering a fallen comrade with second-rate sherry and a retired tart who now looked ready to weep instead of rail. When they put their glasses down, Bodie laid his hand on her forearm, patting it as he added softly, “He was the bravest of all of us.” He turned away before her tears could start, Doyle trailing in his wake.

As the two men walked out of the bar, Doyle looked at Bodie’s back thinking _No, mate. You’re the brave one._

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

With a call to Cowley, they got the rest of the information: names, phone numbers, addresses. Doyle took it down, wondering how the old man had come up with the information so quickly. The Controller of CI5, adept at mind reading, gave him an answer but not the one he expected. Doctor Ross had pulled the information on Bodie’s squad mates together when she became suspicious about why he was failing assessments. Coroners’ reports and files from the military’s central record office supplied the rest. 

He stood in the phone booth, looking at his notes about the squad. Three already done—Williams, Jennings, Thompson. Two with no next of kin identified—Mattingly and Gardner. Must’ve been orphans. Bodie made six. Cowley supplied the details on the remaining ten: one each from Surrey and Sussex, another in London proper, one in Wales, two from Birmingham, a pair in Lancashire, and the others from Manchester and Liverpool. Hard boys. The hardest. Culled from the cream of the crop and trained until their knife edges gleamed with lethal skill.

Doyle walked back to the car, wondering what order Bodie would want to do them in. He’d wager Liverpool would come last.

He’d be wrong. “Do the three down south tomorrow, Sunday. The two in Birmingham the day after. Lancashire Tuesday—those two are practically in the Dales. Manchester Wednesday, Liverpool Thursday. Wales for the rest.” Doyle looked down at the list, reordered as his partner wanted, and tried to divine some mystical significance in the name ‘David Griffiths’ with the address in Wales. Why him last? Had Bodie cared for David more than the others? A flare of jealousy, which Doyle tamped down mercilessly. He was here to support Bodie, help him through this paying of necessary debts, not grow jealous of men long dead.

But it was hard, so very hard not to think about Bodie and his comrades, wondering what might have been, how close Bodie might have come to needing one of them. He longed for a Bodie who could need someone, need a man who could give him everything. Doyle could be that man—he knew it—but Bodie’s comments in roughly three years of partnership on the topic of gays had been sparing. “Those kind of tendencies” he’d mentioned, when they’d hunted up ex-policeman Ann Berry a few years back, the one with the lesbian lover. “Must’ve been murder.” He’d sounded like he understood, could sympathize. And that’s how Doyle desperately wanted him to feel. Because if he did sympathize, Doyle wasn’t as likely to get his lights punched out if he took the first step, took a chance on telling Bodie who featured in all those wettest of wet-dreams he’d been having. He’d risk it, risk it all, if only Bodie returned his feelings. 

_Yeah. And I'm just as likely to jump off the top of Nelson’s Column into a damp tea towel and walk away without a scratch, too. Right._

The coming few days would be difficult enough without thoughts like that to destroy his mood. Doyle switched from being chief navigator along country lanes to asking, “Tell me about these guys. You must have stories about them. Dozens I bet.” 

Bodie looked like he was going to object, but then thought better of it. “Yeah.” Then, “You really want to hear?”

Getting Bodie to talk about his past was like pulling teeth—Doyle wasn’t letting this opportunity slip by. “Yeah. Start with Shorty. Was he?”

“Short? By unit standards, sure. Barely met the minimum, five-eight in his stocking feet, but he got in. All the tall guys ragged him about it when they put our unit together. Until he put them on their backsides the first time." The memory brought a smile to Bodie’s lips. "They didn’t laugh after that. Judo, karate, you name it, Shorty could do it. He wouldn't take any guff; somebody made a crack, he felled ‘em like cordwood.” 

That glimmer of a smile made Doyle wonder if Bodie had taken the piss, and paid for it like the rest. “Even you?”

A pause, then, “Even me.”

“He must’ve been good.”

“He was.”

“Better than Jax?” Jax: current CI5 martial arts specialist, black belt in everything and learning kung fu in his spare time.

“Jax wouldn’t know what hit him.”

Doyle whistled in admiration. “Must’ve been good.”

“We all were, mate. We all were.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The two visits south of London went swiftly, though Doyle caught the woman’s look of suspicion mixed with despair at the last home they visited. He mentioned it to Bodie, and the man shrugged. “No way around it. Jesmond wouldn’t have lent me money if I were begging for tuppence and him standing on a gold mine. He never gave money to anyone.”

“So you don’t think she believed you?” The widow had had her hands full: two teenagers with their radios cranked high upstairs, an invalid father in the sitting room shouting for his tea, and visitors on her doorstep. They’d stayed just long enough to shove the envelope into her hands, make a hasty explanation, and leave.

“I know she didn’t. Jesmond sent every penny he earned back to her for the twins. Always skint.” Bodie popped the clutch, swinging the car onto a B-road that would eventually lead back to London.

“But she took it anyway.” Doyle wondered at the perversity of people whose morals never ceased to amaze him.

“She needs it. Killed in the line of duty pension is small enough.” Bodie didn’t seem concerned, already thinking about the next address, the one in Woodgrange Park.

Doyle couldn’t seem to stop himself. “How did Jesmond die?”

Bodie jerked the car over to the side of the road, cutting the engine abruptly. “If I promise to tell you what happened to each of them when we’re finished, will you leave it out for now?” The haunted look in his eyes made Doyle regret the question but he couldn’t very well take it back now. “I can’t do this any way but my way. I’ll tell you later. About all of them.”

Doyle nodded, the look of mute sympathy one Bodie instantly recognized. An impartial observer might have noted the raw ache that appeared in Doyle’s eyes when Bodie turned to restart the engine and put the vehicle in motion. Even Bodie might have known what it was, had he been looking at the right moment. It’s hard to hide love.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Woodgrange Park came and went readily enough, an O.A.P. down to her last pair of carpet slippers. She accepted the envelope gratefully, thanked Bodie for his sense of obligation, and even offered them tea before they left. “Thanks, no, Mrs Mitchum, we…uh…really should be going now.” Bodie practically bolted for the door, while for once Doyle was left making their apologies. For a man as smooth as his partner, the exit was one of his most ungraceful ever.

Out on the pavement, he found Bodie leaning against the gate, waiting for him. As they walked towards the car, shoulder to shoulder, Doyle asked, “What was that about? She seemed nice.”

It took a moment before Bodie’s explanation came tumbling out. “James Alderson Mitchum was an S.O.B. of the first order. Taking tea with his dear ol’ mum would force me to rethink my opinion, and I don’t care to.”

Doyle gave his partner a sidelong glance before daring to ask, “How’d he get on your bad side? Thought you were all mates together.”

Bodie clambered into the car and looked hard at Doyle as he did the same. “He watched my back, same as I watched his. But he duffed up anyone smaller than him when he’d tied one on, even his own mates when he was too blind drunk to tell friend from foe. If I didn’t know for fact that he died with a Libyan blade buried in his guts, I’d wonder if one of our old mob did him for spite.” And that closed the file on J. A. Mitchum.

Maybe tea was taking things a little too far at that.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The drive up to Birmingham was mostly accomplished in silence that evening, with breaks for food, petrol, and finding a place to sleep when neither could keep their eyes open enough to continue. Twin beds in the room forced Doyle to wonder if he’d been temporarily insane when he’d asked, no, told, Bodie he was coming with him. Shared accommodation in the past few months had only made his blood pressure soar. Exhausted as he was, the prospect of watching Bodie crawl into bed naked was beginning to prey on his nerves. He’d snapped about the food, grumbled in the car about the drive, and seemed none too happy about the housing Bodie had located.

As they climbed the stairs to the “fourth floor back with a lovely view” Bodie asked, “What’s wrong, Doyle? You’ve been narked ever since we got shot of Mitchum’s mum in London. If you’re gonna stay mad, you can take the train back tomorrow—I’m not doing this with extra aggro just for the sake of seeing your mug all week.”

Which effectively reminded Doyle of the bind he was in: leave Bodie, be away from him for the coming week, wonder and worry and miss him like hell but be safe from him finding out Doyle’s secret—or stay with him, put on the appearance of a mate who cared in only a platonic sense, and see this ridiculous string of errands to the bitter end.

The choice wasn’t even close. “Sorry. Been a right bastard, ‘aven’t I?”

“Only since the sun came up.”

“Discounts for half-days and holidays, mate. Don’t see how you put up with me.”

As Bodie unlocked the room and dropped their two bags on the floor, he stopped Doyle with an arm across the doorway, not letting him pass. “Wouldn’t have anybody else.” And the smile Bodie gave him was the kind that told Doyle he was special, he was cared for, he was Bodie’s best mate. It was the sort of smile that made Doyle wonder if maybe Bodie shared his feelings, or was it only Doyle experiencing this singular form of loving madness?

_Couldn’t be. I’ve been careful. He couldn’t know._

Quick to cover his tracks, Doyle cracked a smile in return, and even ruffled Bodie’s black hair with a few fingers. “What an endorsement—you’re mad as a hatter.” And for another evening, Doyle thought he could camouflage his feelings with jokes and the latest gossip about Betty’s alleged love-life. 

Six hours later, Doyle wasn’t so sure. He’d awakened to the rustling of Bodie, tossing and flailing in the bed next to his. The man might be deep in sleep, but it was a tortured sleep, that much was clear. Coming fully awake, Doyle watched for a few minutes as half-mumbled phrases fell from his partner’s lips. Normally, Bodie could sleep through anything: “army training” he called it, giving him the ability to sleep standing upright if necessary. Tonight’s sleep, though, was restless. Between twists and turns, Doyle could make out an amalgam of “no, not here, Keith” and “now, you bastard, now” and “for God’s sake, Mike, get the bleedin’ thing started” along with other names that Doyle now recognized and a few he didn’t. Revisiting the past seemed to play merry hell with getting a good night’s sleep.

After another ten minutes in which Bodie seemed to be reliving a particularly unpleasant series of memories, Doyle decided enough was enough. He got out of bed and crossed the narrow gap to his friend’s side. A hand on his shoulder, and Bodie shot bolt upright, eyes wide open but seeing nothing. Doyle gave him another shake. “It’s me. Doyle. C’mon, Bodie, wake up.”

The glassy-eyed gaze turned towards Doyle, and he knew the instant Bodie stopped dreaming: the muscles all over his friend’s body relaxed, and a weariness seemed to follow immediately. Even his face took on a haggard appearance, as Bodie apologized gruffly. “Sorry.” As he lay back down, he looked up at Doyle, still standing at the edge of his bed. “You may need earplugs for the next few nights.”

Doyle allowed himself a pat on the shoulder, the lightest touch he deemed appropriate between friends. “If I do, you’re paying for ‘em, mate. You can afford it now.” And that earned him a Bodie smile which he answered with one of his own. Then Ray slipped back to his bed and waited until he heard the steady rise and fall of his partner’s chest, breathing calmly, nightmares temporarily banished. But sleep came to Doyle only later.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The two lads from Birmingham didn’t come from council flats, as Doyle halfway expected, but from the ring of planned homes surrounding the Cadbury’s factory grounds. They looked better than the average factory worker had nowadays, though Doyle wasn’t sure if workers lived in them still. Wilson came from the end of a cul-de-sac, Dedham from one with a rose bush blooming in the front garden. The semi-detached houses were only a few blocks from each other, and Doyle speculated that the men might have known each other growing up, might have even enlisted together—though he knew that the SAS could pull them from any infantry or airborne unit it pleased, if they were tough enough. Wilson and Dedham. Just names now, and that seemed wrong to him.

“What were they like?” he asked, as a door closed behind them a second time that day, leaving them free to head to Lancashire late that afternoon. He pushed Bodie away from the driver’s side and motioned him around the car. His partner had driven most of the last two days; it was time to go back to share and share alike. Delivering the envelopes was hard enough on Bodie without the strain of driving too.

When they were out of Birmingham proper, Bodie began sketching an answer. “Blond and dark. Not close, but they knew people in common. Get ‘em talking to each other and the Brummie accent’d be so thick no one else could half understand ‘em. Wilson did the medic course, patched us all up one time or another. Dedham was….” And the words seemed to die in the silence between them.

To prompt or not to prompt? Doyle decided it was worth getting his head bitten off if he was wrong. “Dedham was…?”

“Wasn’t meant to be a soldier, though his knifework was second to none. Carried his heart in his blade.” Said as though it were a failing of some kind.

Doyle didn’t know quite how to respond to that. Since he was driving, he figured Bodie could carry on with the conversation if he had a mind to. His partner was staring out the window, watching the trees flick past, eyes unfocused.

Another few miles went by under the Capri’s tyres before Bodie said, “Sometimes I think you’re like Dedham. Not meant for this kind of life.” He was still staring out the windscreen when he added, “Just because you’re good with a knife doesn’t mean you should be using one.”

Substitute ‘gun’ for ‘knife’ and…. “You think I should get out? Leave CI5?”

“No.” The answer was definite, no argument.

“Because?”

“I need you.” 

And to Doyle’s love-starved ears, it sounded much more like ‘want’ than ‘need’, but then he remembered Bodie’s words to Jennings’s father: _I’d be dead ten times over if it weren’t for him._ Bodie’s ‘need’ was nothing more than protecting his own hide. 

Probably. 

So Doyle put away his foolish thoughts, muttering “I need you too,” wishing very much he could say more and not daring to. When it began raining, he was grateful that the dual carriageway required all of his attention, even if the drive was a brief one.

The Carnforth B&B was another twin bed affair that night, with Doyle taking his time in the loo, dragging out the teeth brushing and mouthwash swigging until he thought Bodie must surely be in bed and nearly asleep. So it came as something of a shock to open the door to their room and find the object of his thoughts in a corner chair, watching, waiting for his return. Doyle dropped the towel on the dresser and crawled into bed, making a great show of yawning, when Bodie said, “Cut it out, Ray.”

“Cut what out?” _Should’ve known this was coming. Bloody mindreader. Man’s a menace._ And he waited for the axe to fall, the words that would change their partnership forever. The words that said Bodie knew.

“The act. Acting like you’re not paying attention to everything I do or say, or don’t say. You’ve been watching me like a hawk, and I’m not having any more of it. I’m not homicidal, suicidal, or headed for Ross’s padded loony bin. I just miss me mates, that’s all, and if I can get over it, you can too.”

_Thank God that’s all he’s worried about_ Doyle thought, heaving a mental sigh of relief. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, well, just stop.”

Doyle nodded, and then was forced to watch the latest version of Bodie’s Strip Show and pretend that nothing was wrong. How could he? Trousers, pants, and poloneck discarded, leaving nothing to the imagination: pale skin, with the palest of blue veins in his arms, across his chest, the few fluffs of chest hair tapering down to a triangle of thick black curls. Before he turned the light off, Bodie sat on the edge of his bed looking at Ray, as if he could impress on Doyle how important it was to leave him be, but he said nothing, simply holding Doyle’s eyes. Even then, it took every ounce of Doyle’s willpower not to look below his partner’s navel, not to see the softest skin peeking out from where the folds of foreskin pulled back when he sat down. Doyle definitely didn’t see the creamy skin where hip met thigh, the tender flesh he dreamed of gripping with fingers and pulling until it stretched taut across his partner’s hipbones. Instead, Doyle felt deafened by his own pulse, thudding in every part of his body. He had a hyperawareness of tightness across his chest, the filling out and lifting of his prick, and he scrambled to raise his knees, to tent the blanket to shield his forbidden lusts. And through it all, Bodie’s eyes never left him.

“Something’s wrong, Ray. Talk to me.”

“Nothing. Good night, Bodie.” _Christ, it’s the ruddy Spanish Inquisition._

“Don’t ‘good night Bodie’ me, mate. Words, Ray. Use ‘em. Is it about the nightmares?”

Like a drowning man suddenly thrown a life preserver, Doyle grasped at the idea as if it had been his from the start. “Yeah. Worried what’ll happen tonight.”

Bodie dipped his head, gazing down at the carpet before he answered. “Dunno what it’ll be tonight, Ray—guns, grenades, general mayhem. But you’ll keep me safe. You always do.”

As Bodie stood up and tossed back the sheet prior to climbing in, Doyle thought _I always will. Even if I’m the one that’s breaking inside._

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

A few hours passed, and then Doyle once more came awake to the sounds of Bodie wrestling the blankets in his sleep. This time, however, the muttering was furtive, as if no one else should hear. Maybe Bodie’s psyche had gained the upper hand, trying not to disturb Doyle’s rest. “Quiet, Dedham, you’ll get us all killed” gave way to “Guard coming, Shorty, drop him” and similar sentiments, all about staying out of sight, undercover. Listening to ops long gone, remembered now only in some decrepit file depot or Bodie’s subconscious, Doyle decided to wait rather than wake his partner. His mind seemed to be thrashing things out, and maybe it was better to let the dreams run their course. 

What he didn’t count on, of course, was hearing about Williams, again and again. “Keith, move your arse” sounded innocent enough, but the phrase took on a whole new meaning after Doyle heard Bodie follow that with, “Fuck me now, Keith.” That made Doyle sit up straight in the room’s darkness, alert in every muscle for what came next. But Bodie’s mental wanderings appeared to be over for the night, and it was Doyle who got very little sleep before the next morning came.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The drive to tiny Keasdon, and thence to Paythorne--neither Lancashire town big enough to rate even a zebra crossing—passed in a blur for Doyle as he drove the next day. He barely heard what Bodie said about Morecambe and Kines, who everybody in the squad apparently called Morecambe and Wise after the comedians. He watched the road, followed Bodie’s directions, patted the shoulders of two more women who looked too young to be grieving widows, and couldn’t stop thinking about what Bodie’s subconscious had so conveniently informed him the previous night. _He’s bent. I’ve been afraid of telling him I want him, and he’s queer. What a turn up for the books._

Having discovered that the man of his dreams would go with men or women indiscriminately didn’t solve his dilemma, however; it just gave Doyle a headache. _What if he wants someone super-macho like Williams, and not me?_ A new layer of insecurities wrapped themselves around Doyle so thoroughly that he missed the glances Bodie started giving him in the middle of the afternoon as they approached Manchester.

The small hotel Bodie booked them into was nearly full, some music festival going on, and they were lucky to get the last room with twin beds. Doyle sat in his tracksuit bottoms until nearly midnight, staring out the window at a yard of railway carriages and signals that seemed unmoving. Eerie it might be, but it allowed him to miss the Bodie Strip Show which played out behind him. Only when he knew Bodie was in bed for the night did Doyle risk turning around. 

He might be tucked in for the night, but Bodie’s eyes were fixed on him, pinning Ray to the window. “Something’s bothering you, Doyle. Been like this all day. What’d I say last night?” 

Sometimes it was damned hard working with a smart partner; the man never missed a trick. Doyle didn’t answer but walked over to the gap between their beds and sat on the edge of Bodie’s. Now was the moment: he could lie, or he could tell Bodie the truth and see what happened.

Lying to Bodie. He’d had months of it, years, and now he saw an exit.

“You told Dedham to shut up, Shorty to drop the guard. And you told Keith to hurry up and fuck you.”

Brilliant blue eyes narrowed, never wavering from Doyle’s face. “So now you know.”

“Not everything, but enough.” A pause, then Doyle asked the obvious, for confirmation. “That’s why you had to hunt down King Billy. To avenge Keith.”

A quick shake of the head, disagreeing. “We were quits, Keith and I. Had been for years.” Bodie hadn’t stopped watching Doyle’s face intently. “King Billy…I’d’ve done the same for Jennings, or Dedham, or you. You’ve kept my hide in one piece, for which I am intensely grateful.” 

“Does Cowley know?”

“That I’m bisexual? Since day one when he took me from Major Nairn. Nairn found out about Keith’s preferences and got shot of everyone Keith had even glanced at, me included. He had to tell Cowley why, though. That was when CI5 was just starting up, and Cowley needed anyone he could get.” Silence for a moment, then Bodie placed a hand on Doyle’s forearm before he quietly offered, “If you want, I’ll have Cowley re-team us. Say it’s my fault.”

Though his forearm might be burning from the contact, Doyle instantly responded, “Break the team? You’ve gone round the twist you ‘ave, mate.” 

And now came the moment. Doyle knew it, knew he had to speak, or the opportunity might be lost forever. “Besides, he’d have to find somebody else who's bi to pair you with, and there’s only me and Stuart on the squad.”

The flare in those glittering aquamarine eyes was immediate, not hidden quickly enough: shock, amazement. “You…?”

Echoing Bodie’s earlier words, Doyle calmly replied, “So now _you_ know.” 

The beginnings of a Bodie smile started to appear, melting Doyle’s heart like ice cream on a hot summer day. Then, Bodie gave an involuntary yawn, his whole body curling as his lungs dragged in oxygen. His hand came off Doyle’s arm as he scrubbed it across his eyes, energy clearly flagging. “This Father Christmas bit is wearing me out—no wonder the old duffer only delivers once a year.” He stifled another huge yawn and said, “Glad there’s just three more days of it, then we get a day or two off.”

 _So much for my big secret. You couldn’t care less._ Doyle managed to keep the hurt out of his voice, barely. “Looking forward to that. Wales, eh? You planning for us to hike Snowdonia?”

“You’ll see,” Bodie answered, before rolling onto his side, slightly closer to Doyle. 

Suddenly Doyle couldn’t sit there a minute longer. He gave Bodie’s shoulder an impersonal pat, tried to make light of everything. “Get some sleep.” He snapped off the light, crawled into his own bed, and wondered if his heart could break a second time because he'd told his partner everything and the prat still didn’t want him.

Bodie’s sleep that night was undisturbed by visions of the past. Doyle knew because it took him hours to fall asleep, and he spent the time watching the rhythmic rise and fall of blankets in Bodie’s bed. 

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Locating the address in Manchester Wednesday morning was trivially easy, and Bodie seemed to be finding the lie of an old debt repaid easier with each repetition. Doyle could see, though, that talking to Robbins’s grown son cost Bodie something extra. He waited until they were rolling towards Liverpool before he asked why.

“He looks exactly like Terry. Could be the man’s twin,” Bodie ground out between clenched teeth. 

After that, Doyle got precisely nothing for the next hour, except a profile view of Bodie expertly manoeuvring the Capri past slow moving cars and between drivers who were less practiced at driving 25 kilometres over the speed limit. Whatever Bodie might be dreading in Liverpool, he was hurtling them towards it at a headlong pace.

Bodie had them south of the Mersey, on the fringes of Birkenhead, a few minutes before noon. The traffic thinned as he offered, “We need a room for the night.” A sudden turn of the wheel took them down a slip-road, off the motorway and shooting through side streets until Bodie found the one he wanted. He pulled to the kerb in front of a ramshackle three-storey affair and cut the engine. “Wait here.”

 _Not much else to do, can I? You won’t talk to me._ The whirl of thoughts and emotions in Doyle’s head was pushed aside as he watched Bodie climb the steps and ring the bell. An elderly woman, a little overweight but not too much so, eventually answered the door and after a hug— _that’s odd_ —and some more words, Bodie turned towards the car and gestured for Doyle to join him. Grabbing the carryalls from the back seat, Doyle locked the car and followed where his partner led.

“This is Mrs Lendon. Say hullo, Ray.”

“Hullo, Mrs Lendon. Thanks for taking us in with no notice.” There wasn’t any sign of other guests, or markers that this was a place accepting lodgers, so Doyle figured it must be a piece of Bodie’s childhood finally coming to light.

She beckoned them into the hallway, saying too loudly, “That’s alright, Mr Doyle. William’s explained. You can have the room on the top floor while you’re here, and there’s spare keys by the door when you come and go, just lock up when you’re out.” With the television blaring in the next room, he could barely hear her. 

Once she’d shut the front door behind them, they stepped through to a sort of parlour-television room-gambling den, for Doyle couldn’t make anything else of the assorted furniture that crowded the space: table covered in green baize for playing cards, a large console television—with what looked to be some dire American action show running at high volume—and in the corner, an upright piano, dusty, with hideous orange plastic flowers sprouting out of a basket on top. 

While he was busy sizing up the room, she’d obviously been doing the same to him. Sharp. Whatever she saw while he was looking at the room must have satisfied her.

Again, she half-shouted, “It’s about time William paid a proper visit. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Towels in the airing cupboard, bath's on the top floor too. I eat breakfast at seven and dinner at six, but it’s Tuesday so I’ll be going over to Rosie’s tonight to watch the little ones. You’ll have to shift for yourselves.”

Having been called ‘William’ twice, Bodie’s cheeks were tinged just the slightest bit pink, but he managed to say clearly, and a bit loudly, “We’ll manage, Mrs Lendon. See you tomorrow bright and early.” He leaned down to give her a peck on the cheek, which she took as her due.

Having double-locked the front door, the woman returned to her place on the settee and her cops and robbers programme as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Doyle gave up on understanding what had transpired and looked to Bodie for a translation. 

“Upstairs.” Leaving Doyle to carry their bags, Bodie climbed the carpeted treads, taking the steps two at a time. Midday sunshine angled through windows on the landings, wallpaper faded where it landed.

Doyle lumbered behind, toting their carryalls and wondering what sort of explanation Bodie could offer. After two flights of stairs, the top floor came into view. Bodie didn’t stop at the first room, facing the street with narrow twin beds, but moved straight to the rear, where a larger room looked over a back garden. He walked into the middle of the room and turned to face his partner.

Doyle stopped in the doorway, looking beyond to the one bed that stood against the far wall. A full-sized bed, and a few other pieces of furniture, and all he could think was _Did I misunderstand? If you’re making a move, why didn’t you do it last night?_ The question must have been written on his face, because Bodie began talking without waiting for Doyle to start in on him.

“We need privacy to sort things out, and we’ll get it here. No nosy parkers.” Bodie’s tone implied that they had plenty to discuss. From the look on his face, Bodie didn't look like he wanted to talk, though. 

Ray wasn't sure what to think. His heart was racing.

Bodie glanced down at the floor, then up at Doyle again. “You gonna stand in that doorway ‘til midnight?”

Doyle didn’t know what to make of the sudden shift in topic. Did Bodie expect them to—? He wasn’t sure and wasn't going to guess. Too much hung in the balance. He asked one simple question, his future riding on the answer.

“Where should I sleep?”

Eyes piercing, Bodie was cataloguing everything about Ray’s face, as though he might learn something if only he looked at his partner hard enough. Rough-voiced, he answered, “Where would you like to sleep?”

The woman’s near-deafness—the fact that they hadn’t gone to a small hotel, passing dozens on their way here—the lone bed behind Bodie in the room—his partner’s stance, part invitation, part wary anticipation. The facts suddenly slotted together in Doyle’s mind. He knew what Bodie wanted but hadn’t been able to ask for. _Where would you like to sleep?_

“With you.” He held his breath, awaiting Bodie’s reply.

A fraction of a second later, he had it. A raised eyebrow, inviting, and Bodie held out his hand to draw Doyle from the doorway. Bags dropped, forgotten, and Doyle stepped into strong, waiting arms. Paradise, desperately sought, unexpectedly appeared before him. 

Bodie pushed him backwards, slamming the door shut with the weight of both their bodies and commenced a complete investigation, checking him thoroughly for any wiretaps or bugs cleverly concealed beneath his tongue or along his gums. Meanwhile, Doyle frisked his partner with a thoroughness that suggested he might be carrying concealed weapons practically everywhere. The mutual inspection remained satisfyingly incomplete: Doyle’s hands couldn’t seem to touch enough of his partner’s body, and Bodie’s frantic kisses, rained down upon lips, cheeks, eyelids, were apparently not going to stop any time soon. Soon Doyle's tongue was inside Bodie's mouth, and Bodie's tongue responded, the two of them moving in unthinking harmony as their hands continued to sweep all essential territory. The evidence was collected, sifted, and rechecked: thick erections rubbed together through too many layers of clothing, thighs pressed tight to hold each other close, chests heaving in a single rhythm of breathless desire—oh yes, if Doyle’s mind had been working, he’d have had overwhelming proof that Bodie was just as aroused as he was. Instead, he had his hands deliciously, completely full, and his mind was empty of everything except this man he wanted.

Between one kiss and another Bodie rasped, “Get ‘em off, Ray.” His hands were on Doyle’s shirt, one button sent flying when Bodie couldn’t wait for the thing to get out of the way. He wasn’t watching his hands as they worked: his nose and eyes were buried in the curling hair behind Ray’s ear, while Bodie was busy sucking on an exposed earlobe. 

Doyle’s ability to see was likewise severely compromised: head thrown back against the door, offering himself to Bodie as if it were the most natural thing for his partner to nip the skin there…and there…and _ohGodtherepleasethere_ …. Doyle didn’t have to see to do what came next: his fingers found the belt and zip to Bodie’s trousers, disposing of cords and pants simultaneously. He pushed the fabric down, just low enough for his hands to sweep over the pert backside he’d been watching for what seemed like ages. He couldn’t stop moving his fingers over the soft skin, and Doyle’s palms gripped the rounded flesh from beneath, pulling Bodie towards him, kneading buttocks until he heard Bodie groan with fevered desire. 

Doyle took that as his cue to do more. Swiftly, he rolled, pinning Bodie against the door, ridding himself of shirt and holster completely. Bodie’s fingers trembled while they worked his partner’s jeans off, and Doyle turned his attention to Bodie's poloneck, lifting it upwards to bare his chest. He settled for pushing it far enough up so his fingers could stroke nipples and muscles—a wealth of pleasure suddenly his. Bodie’s hands, meanwhile, had shoved Doyle's denims southward and brought their pricks together with precision timing. Erect, the foreskins folded back and cockheads glistened with moisture, their meeting instinctive: each man’s right hand moving down to grip his partner in a mirror image, the most intimate embrace. Palms and fingertips trapped two sets of hardened upright flesh, and the sensitive business of endgame was upon them. Heavy, primed muscle thrust upward, while two hands worked up and down in tandem, teamwork, teamwork, always together. Calloused ridges on their palms, unspoken reminders of their profession, rubbing, increased the friction to the point of near-mindlessness. Bodie’s head dropped to Ray’s shoulder when he couldn’t take much more, so Doyle ran his index finger over both their cockheads, trigger finger now triggering something quite, quite different, a twinned conclusion, the pulses bringing them relief from a sweet, sweet torture.

How they made it to the bed, Doyle couldn't recall. The drive to claim each other again was unmistakeable within the hour, and they tormented each other briefly before kisses gave way to a second urgent, sweaty climax, two bodies crisscrossed by trails of dappled sunlight peeking through white cotton curtains. When they lay exhausted yet renewed in one another's arms, a clock downstairs chimed two. Ray mumbled, "Can't stay awake."

"Me neither. Afternoon nap." A chin worked its way further into the pillow, nuzzling against Doyle's cheek. Bodie’s stomach rumbled briefly, causing him to look shamefacedly at Ray, mild embarrassment at its indelicate timing. “Early dinner?”

“Yeah. Then back here.”

"Don't wanna sleep."

A sketchy nod, and a half-awake voice said, “Nap."

"Right." 

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

After the better part of an afternoon—and evening—spent exploring each other’s bodies, Bodie murmured to Ray that tomorrow he’d show Ray “everything” just before the man slumped into unconsciousness. The night passed with them waking again, driving each other to distraction, then more sleep. Each man’s eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep when they arose Thursday.

As they shaved and showered in the morning, swapping places in the tiny bathroom and peppering their conversation with the kinds of kisses swapped by newly minted lovers, Bodie told him they'd be spending another night with Mrs Lendon. When repeated downstairs over toast and tea, the news seemed to please the old girl, who had conjured enough food out of thin air to feed all three of them. She didn’t ask what the two men were doing, or why, but as Bodie offered no explanation, Ray wisely kept his mouth shut too and let the man lead the way out to the car. 

On home turf, now, Bodie needed no navigator. All Doyle had to do was stay wide awake so that he didn't miss anything. The car shot through Kingsway Tunnel from Birkenhead to Liverpool proper, passing acre after acre of docks, ships, and shipyards. It was a slow crawl into the heart of the city. Doyle could hear trains rumbling nearby, screened by overgrown plants, industrial fencing, and rubbish. One housing estate gave way to another, but Bodie's sense of direction seemed unerring. He pulled the car onto Fontenoy Street and began scanning the numbers until they found the right tower block. Another envelope neared its destination.

For a mercy, the lift worked, although Doyle found himself wishing his sense of smell didn't. The stench of boiled cabbage competed unhappily with curry, fish, and stale piss each time the lift’s doors opened. At the fifth floor, they found old man Digweed, who swallowed Bodie's story with almost unnatural ease. He took the envelope so fast it made Doyle wonder if he owed money to some local heavies. They didn't linger once Bodie had delivered his set piece.

Doyle asked, as they slid into the car, "You had something against Digweed?"

"Nah. Just wasn't his best mate. Wrong side of the Mersey, I guess." And with a telling glance at Doyle, Bodie revved the car to life.

Ten minutes later, they were pulling into a space next to a large green park, and Bodie nodded toward it in invitation. "C'mon. You've got questions." Doyle said nothing, closing his car door and walking to the entrance. A battered notice hung from the bricks: Newsham Park, closed at dusk.

By tacit consent, the two men chose a long winding path and began walking. Around them, children kicked balls and women pushed prams, but Doyle's whole attention was focused on the man next to him. Bodie rarely gave openings like this one; he'd have to tread lightly. "Who's Mrs Lendon?"

There was almost relief on Bodie's face--an easy question, compared to the ones he didn't want to answer. “My gran’s best friend. Her kids live away; she’s alone. Always let us have the run of the place when we were younger. Turn up after five years and she’d think you’d only gone to the corner for a packet of crisps a few minutes ago,” he explained. Then he added, “She's only dim when she wants to be. She’s brilliant at cards, bets—don’t ever try to bluff her, or she’ll have your balls on toast.” 

Doyle couldn't help grinning. “Taught you to play cards?”

“She taught me about life, mate. When Gran couldn’t handle us anymore, we went there. Kids our own age, and her always ready to play whatever game we wanted. Later on, she told me that the games were to keep us off the streets, out of trouble. She always had a mob there, half of ‘em not hers.” Bodie’s eyes clouded suddenly, navy fading to a darker hue. Something must not have worked with Mrs Lendon’s strategy. “She wanted better for all of us. She lost a son and a grandson the hard way. Knife fight on the docks, pub brawl that got out of hand." 

The automatic acceptance she had given to Bodie and his friend suggested the untold quantities of care she'd lavished on children in days gone by, and Doyle said as much. Bodie agreed. “She did love us. Didn’t matter if we were hers or not. Kept right on loving, too, even if our families went off the rails.”

"Which yours did." It was half statement, half question. Invisible signs posted in all previous conversations about Bodie’s family had warned "Keep Out" for as long as Doyle had known the man, but after last night, the barriers seemed to be coming down at last.

Slowly nodding, Bodie kept his eyes fastened on the path, not his surroundings. "Which mine did. Dad was alright till Mum took ill. Wasn't more than five when…." 

Doyle held his breath, not wanting to interrupt the flow of memories now that they had started.

"After Mum went, Dad wasn't…right. Loved her, y'know. Loved her until there wasn't anything or anybody else." Bodie looked up, blankly, the trees, the sky not really registering as he dragged in a shaky breath. "He made it through the first year. Dunno how. Wasn't anything at work or at home he cared about. Locked himself in their bedroom and…." A gulp, then, "When I came home from school, that's where I found him. Wouldn't wake up. I shook and I shook and…." The slight waver to his voice told the rest of the story.

 _Dear God. No wonder you hate this place._ The noise and people in the park dropped away, and there was no one else except Bodie, and what a little boy remembered, discovering a body gone cold, so long ago. Doyle steered his partner to the nearest bench and sat down beside him. Bodie hunched forward, palms pushed into his eyes as if he could banish the memories, and Doyle draped an arm over him, fingers gripping Bodie's shoulder as he tried not to let his partner's grief swamp him. Quietly, he asked, "You went to your gran's?"

Bodie leaned back, eyes scrubbed red, and he stared up at the sky for a time. "Yeah, me and Joan. Gran lived eight years after that. Pneumonia." He turned to look at Doyle. "Knew then, there was nothing left for me here. Quit school, found a warehouse job until I looked old enough to pass for a deckhand, got some doctored papers so I could sign on, and spent a decade pretending I'd never come back here." Bodie rolled his head sideways, sparing his partner a rueful glance. “You know most of the rest.”

 _Only the outlines, mate._ "What happened to Joan?"

"Married, kids, divorced, bitter. Still angry at me for leaving." Rattled off like a report to Cowley: just the facts.

"She live here?"

"In Gran's old house."

"Plan to see her?" Doyle half-hoped, half-feared that Bodie would say yes. If he met anyone angry with Bodie, he wouldn't answer for the consequences.

“No." Case closed.

Good. "Just as well. I won't have to explain that my intentions are anything but honourable."

That brought back a smile. "Same as mine, then."

The two men traded broadening grins. Bodie said, "Actually, I'm revising my opinion of the place. Liverpool's not so bad. Could be a place I want to come again, and again, and…" Bodie's hand moved onto Doyle's knee, giving it a light squeeze.

Doyle snorted. "Berk." A quick scan of the nearest people indicated they'd heard and seen nothing out of the ordinary. "Can't do that here."

"Why'd you think we went to Mrs Lendon's and not a B&B last night? Not illegal in a private home."

"Trust you to think of a thing like that." But Doyle's eyes twinkled when he said it.

"We'd be back in that Manchester dive when we wanted to ‘stroll down memory lane’ if I hadn't been so knackered the night before."

"We gonna be strolling a lot like that in the future?" Doyle's heart began to beat faster.

"Nope."

Heart failure imminent. "‘M not good enough for you?"

Bodie relented with a smirk. "Gonna be so busy making new memories, won't need to visit the past, will we?" He paused, giving Doyle a searching look. "Unless…you don't want to."

Normal service could resume—Doyle’s heart began beating again. "I want."

A full-blown Bodie smile creased his partner's face. "Right. That's settled." Giving Doyle's hand a tug, he jerked him up and off the bench. "C'mon. Places to go."

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

‘Places to go’ turned out to be a tour of Bodie's misspent youth. School playgrounds, alleyways, the neighbourhood corner—they even stopped on the pavement opposite the news-agent where he used to buy his gran the daily racing form. “Why do you think she and Mrs Lendon got on so well? Bet each other on the ponies.” 

“Instead of a bookmaker?”

“Keep the money at home, 'stead of givin' it to strangers. They were tightfisted, those two. Enjoyed having a bet between themselves, knew the form of every horse that ran. Cheltenham, Doncaster, you name it.” 

It was a peculiar system, and no mistake. Doyle said so.

“Gran used to call bookies 'vultures’ 'cause they'd swoop in on the men as soon as they had a pay packet. Gran and Mrs Lendon couldn't afford to get in deep with one of them, not if they were gonna feed a mob of children.”

“Not much money at home, then.”

“Gran scraped every penny to keep me and Joan in decent clothes.”

“Not to mention fed.”

That brought a smile to Bodie's face and a faraway look. “She always managed tuppence on Friday for some sweets, if we behaved.”

“Big Swiss roll fan even then, eh?”

“Nah, liquorice wands, bulls-eyes. No taste for blackjacks, though.”

Doyle snickered. “Big surprise. You don't like them now.”

“Bad idea in our line of work.” The two men nodded in unison.

Doyle spotted a pub down the street. “Fancy a pint?” 

“Sure. Be back in time for dinner.”

“Right.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The smell of minced beef and onions wafted through the door as they returned to Mrs Lendon's at a minute to six. Mushrooms, too, and spinach, if Doyle's nose didn't deceive him. They stuck their heads into the kitchen, where she was preparing to dish everything up at the small table. 

“Never knew William to miss his feed,” she observed tartly, with a mirthful glance to his waistline. “But you look like you've missed some in your time,” she said, giving Doyle a shove towards the nearest tatty chair. “Eat up, lad.”

Several plates of hearty food later, they all pushed back from the table. Feeling he should do something to repay the old lady's hospitality, Ray went to the sink and began washing up while Bodie dried. She put away plates and saucers until all the dishes were gone. 

After taking off her apron and hanging it on the nearest hook, she turned to look straight at Doyle. At full volume, she asked, “You take care of 'im?”

“Yes. Every day.” Solemnly spoken, loud enough for her to hear.

She looked him up and down once more, then tugged him by the shirtsleeve down to her level. “Give us a kiss, then.”

Doyle kissed the weathered cheek. She smiled, though her eyes were a bit sad. He smiled in return. She patted his arm, as if he were a child.

“You'll do.” And she waddled off to the front room, where another cops and robbers show began blaring away.

Bodie leaned in, next to his ear, and mock-whispered, “She approves.”

“Good to know.” Somehow, Doyle wanted her approval, though he wasn't precisely sure what he'd done to deserve it. He asked Bodie that very question when they reached the top of the stairs. 

The man looked thoughtful as he answered. “She's heard it all. Nothing shocks her.”

“You sure it isn't because she knew what you went through as a boy?”

“Maybe.” Bodie took his hand, pulling him toward the bedroom. He shut the door and took Doyle in his arms. “That doesn't matter now. All that matters is this.” The kisses started coming thick and fast, until both men lost track of everything but each other.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

On his way to the bathroom the next morning, Bodie called back over his shoulder. “Jacket and tie this morning, Ray.”

Puzzled, Doyle didn't understand. But that was normal for everything this week, and so far, he'd only benefited from letting Bodie lead. He slipped into his good shirt and jacket.

Even with a mirror to aid him, his fingers fumbled the tie's knot. On his third attempt, he got it right, just in time for Bodie to return, shaved, dressed, and ready to go. 

They dutifully trooped downstairs in time for a quick breakfast with Mrs Lendon. When the dishes were done, she asked Bodie, “You're off today, luv?”

“After we go and see Gran, yeah,” he replied, loud enough for her to hear.

She nodded, then patted his arm. “Don't stay away, William. I may not be here much longer, y'know.” She looked over at Doyle. “It's been years since the last time, years. You remind him, y'hear?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She laughed at that. “Yes, you'll do fine.”

At the front door, they each gave her a kiss, and she demanded a hug from Bodie. “You be careful.”

“I will.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The two men moved silently through the rows of headstones. Abruptly, Doyle had a flash of insight. “Last time you came here was a few years ago, right?”

Bodie faltered, then regained his stride. “Yes. When I was demobbed at Hereford. Before Cowley got me.”

At the end of the path, he turned left into a parallel row between two sets of tombstones. After ten graves or so, he stopped. A line of BODIEs waited there: Emily, John, Martha.

Bodie knelt, clearing some weeds away from Martha's grave. In sympathy, Doyle did the same for John and Emily. The dates, only a year apart, meant they must be Bodie's parents.

It was the work of only a few minutes. Finally, Bodie stood up, brushed the dirt from his hands, and settled into something like parade rest, gazing down at the three graves. 

Doyle joined him. He looked at LOVING HUSBAND and BELOVED WIFE, not knowing what to say. The silence lingered until Bodie spoke.

“She knew it was her time.” Bodie was staring at Martha's tombstone. 

Simple arithmetic told Doyle she'd been in her seventies when she died. “Think we'll last that long?”

“Probably not.” The voice of a realist.

Doyle winced. Sometimes he wished Bodie had a little more of the optimist in him. But then, he wouldn't be Bodie. “Do you ever--”

“I wouldn’t be here now, if not for you.” Bodie glanced at his partner, then back down to Martha's grave. “If she were here, she'd be grateful.”

“I'm the grateful one. Seems to me she did all right by you.”

Bodie turned to look his partner in the eye. “Grateful, huh?”

“That she taught you how to care.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

With one last envelope to deliver, they left the cemetery and drove by turns from Liverpool to a tiny hamlet near Cardiff, pausing for coffee and petrol on the motorway. When they got to Dinas Powys, the Welsh village looked like something out of the nineteenth century, with its market spread out in the town square and picture-perfect window boxes of nasturtiums at the pub. Bright red tubes shot out of the greenery, which seemed at odds with the nippy breeze blowing in on a September day.

They found David Griffiths's mum at a small cottage, faded green trim on a faded white house. She too had nasturtiums growing, though hers were red flecked with yellow climbing a trellis at one end of the house. The woman looked like she'd burst into tears when Bodie explained his errand.

“He always spoke so highly of you, y'know. You were good to him, to the end.”

Bodie shook his head, disagreeing. “David was a good man. Got us out of a lot of tight spots.”

Bodie repeated his piece about wishing he could give the money to David in person, then patted her shoulder and made for the car before her tears began to fall.

Doyle felt that irrational spurt of jealousy flare again. Why had Bodie been good to David? But as soon as he thought that, Ray realized—did it really matter? The man was dead. He tried to strangle his jealous envy before it showed, and thought he did a good job of it, too.

Apparently not good enough.

As they climbed into the Capri, Bodie asked quietly, “You see the ramp on the side of the house?”

Doyle shook his head. He hated being unobservant, and he flicked a glance back to the house. There, the corner showing at the base of the hedge. When talking with David’s mother, the thing should have been bloody obvious if he'd half looked, which he hadn't. He was preoccupied with Bodie, Bodie’s past, Bodie’s lovers….

“After Belfast, David was in a wheelchair.”

That shamed him, jealous of a dead man and crippled to boot. But it didn't stop him from asking a question. He couldn't help it. “Why was David so grateful?”

Steering the car into the flow of traffic, Bodie replied tensely, “Because a man in a wheelchair doesn't get a lot of visitors. Especially when his so-called mates think he got another man in the unit killed.”

“Who?” Doyle knew all their names now.

“Dedham.”

The Brummie who carried his heart in his blade. “Was it David's fault?”

“No. But Dedham was still dead.”

“What happened?”

“Tripwire in a building we were told was an ammo dump.” A pause, then, “It could have been any of us. Anyone who took point that day. Wall crushed the first man, enough of it left to take out a second who followed close behind. The mob blamed Griffiths—we’d swept enough unsecure areas to spot a wire job.” Bodie manoeuvred the car around a lorry, adding, “I was behind Griffiths and I didn’t see it.”

And that's why you never blamed him. “You visited him.”

Bodie nodded, remembering. “When I could. Which wasn't often enough. Didn't stop him from swallowing a gun barrel to end it all, when he got the chance.” 

Flooded with regret, Doyle promised himself never to doubt Bodie's loyalty again. When the man gave himself, he did it wholeheartedly. How could he have forgotten yesterday so soon? _“Gonna be so busy making new memories, won't need to visit the past, will we?”_ Doyle took a deep breath and looked over at his mate. Time to change the subject. “You gonna tell me where we're going now?” Having fulfilled Bodie's wish to return the money, he didn't know what their destination was, except that it was north.

“Talybont-on-Usk. Pontsticill. Aberhonddu.” The Capri roared up the A470, flashing past a sign that read “BRECON BEACONS NATIONAL PARK.”

That made sense. The place where SAS men are made.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Stopping just long enough to stock up on camping rations at the general store in Talybont-on-Usk, the two men drove deep into the heart of the Beacons, high peaks surrounding them most of the way. Doyle wasn’t surprised when Bodie pulled into a lay-by outside Llanfrynach and cut the engine. “Just enough light to get there, if we hike quickly. A hafod at the top of the glen here.” Bodie seemed to know the land like a native, though Doyle struggled to remember the last time either of them had gone to Wales for work or holiday. Both men began to pull items from the car boot, dividing the food between their rucksacks. Doyle swapped his shoes for thick socks and hiking boots, dumped his jacket and best shirt for a vest, heavy wool shirt, and waterproof from among his camping gear. The car locked, the partners shouldered their backpacks and walked to an opening between trees that led off the road into shadows. Bodie did have a map, Doyle noticed, which he glanced at quickly before tucking it into a side pocket and striding over to a narrow path that angled up a hill. Doyle trailed after him, calling out, “What’s a hafod?”

“Tiny hut. A sort of shack for the families that move their sheep up or down the valleys depending on the seasons. Late enough in the season, like now, it ought to be empty.” The words drifted down from Bodie’s back, as the man made short work of the hillside before him, picking his way up the rocky path among the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. In twenty minutes, the car was far below them. In forty minutes, the road they had driven in on was completely lost to sight. The ease with which Bodie zigzagged his way up the hillside spoke of knowing this trail well. Exactly why, Doyle wondered about.

Doyle kept his questions to a minimum as they climbed, though, saving his breath for the exertion his body was now making in the steep terrain. He set his feet where Bodie placed his, trusting his partner on this territory just as Bodie trusted him on the city streets. Ray focused on keeping his footing, which was getting trickier the higher they climbed. The higher they got, the more one question kept bugging him—Doyle knew a few of the cardinal rules from their survival training in mountain settings and Jack Craine’s relentless workouts. “Sure we’re gonna get there before nightfall?”

“We’ll make it.” The curt reply brooked no dispute. 

_Guess you know where you’re going, then._

After ninety minutes, Bodie called a quick halt where the path—and at this point it barely deserved the name of path—levelled out and allowed two people to stand side by side. The men shared a few swigs of water, while Doyle caught his breath. _Bastard doesn’t even look winded._

“We’ve got another thirty minutes up to the hut, then we’ll want to gather deadfall to make a fire; if we’re lucky, there may be some wood along the side of the hafod we can use, replace in the morning with new. We won’t have to rig a shelter, fortunately, and with a fire you can rustle up some chicken for dinner. Okay?” 

“Yeah. But if it’s only thirty minutes, why stop to rest?”

“You’re not used to this. A blow now will keep you sharp later on. Besides, the trail gets worse after this.”

_Terrific._ “Okay.”

Their climbing resumed. After a few more minutes, Bodie turned, angling his way between some trees and around a boulder. Doyle followed close behind, marvelling that the narrow path could grow even more rugged. “Guess these folks keep sheep in the upper pasture, not cattle, judging by this path, eh?”

“Yeah. Welsh Mountain sheep can manage this. A steer would be too big.” Doyle watched the powerful muscles in Bodie’s shoulders twist to one side, allowing body and rucksack to slip sideways through a tight spot in the rocks before he continued his upward trek. Doyle imitated him and pressed his chest to the rock wall, shimmying through the tiny opening to the other side of the rocks.

Another half hour of climbing up and in a few cases over fallen rocks along the now-disappeared trail, upward, always upward, and then Doyle turned a corner into an unexpected meadow. At the far end, a one-room shack nestled between tall trees. Bodie looked back at him with a wry grin—”Home sweet home”—before he set off across the meadow, allowing Doyle to catch up and walk beside him.

No longer forced to watch every footstep he took, Doyle looked around at the clearing, getting a chance to examine their mountain hideaway. The meadow’s grasses were drying out, and the trees surrounding the meadow were either evergreens or the kind that were starting to show their autumn colours. As they crossed the meadow, a sudden rush of wind reminded him how high up they had already come into the mountains; the wall of rock behind him seemed to funnel the cooler air across the meadow. “Another month or so and this place won’t be worth living in, right?”

Bodie nodded, striding through the grass. “It’s a spring and summer meadow, bring the sheep up to get fat on the high grass, then take them back down for autumn and winter. Shear them down there too.” 

Ray kept pace with him, stride for stride. “So, this one of your SAS hideaways? Always knew they sent recruits to get a spa treatment, nails and a rinse job on those camping trips instead of roughing it.”

Bodie smirked. “Officers only, berk. It’s unplotted on the maps they give recruits going through Selection. Their trail’s on the other side of the ridge line. This is for SAS observers, plus medical evacuation if needed.”

“Don’t tell me they could carry an injured man down what we just hiked. I won’t believe you.”

“Nah, but you can get a chopper into this meadow.” Having reached the hut, Bodie walked around the side, with Doyle in his wake.

A short pile of firewood nestled between two posts adjoining the shack. “Our luck is in. We can gather deadfall in the morning. C’mon.” Circling back to the hut’s door, Bodie opened it and entered. The single room had a low ceiling, plank flooring, and a window facing west. The room’s contents did not overwhelm them. A table, chair, fireplace with a hanging pot, and a single cot made up the room’s entire inventory, leaving aside the single plate, fork, knife, and spoon on the table. Bodie obviously expected a bit better, muttering “Be living in Formby next” half to himself as he unslung his pack off his shoulders.

“Huh?” Doyle pulled off his rucksack too, letting it drop to the floor.

“Means you’ve had a promotion at work, can afford to move where the toffs live. Tired of slumming it.” Bodie gestured to the nearly empty room. “Six months of this, plus sheep? Doesn’t the idiot need some cards? A book? Something to pass the time?”

“Maybe he’s into nature.”

“Could be he’s just _into_ sheep,” Bodie leered. Then he sobered. “This is ridiculous. Not even a tin of beans?” Bodie lowered his rucksack in one corner and began pulling out food, a canteen, clothing. 

Doyle joined him, piling his sleeping bag and camping gear off to the side. “You take me to the nicest places,” he joked.

“I shall expect the Taj Mahal when it’s your turn to book ahead.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

After eating a meal that Doyle mockingly dubbed ‘chicken chasseur’ from the single shared plate, the two men scrubbed their gear at the rainwater tub outside then piled pot, plate, and utensils to dry near the fireplace. The fire itself was drawing nicely, and Bodie kept the flames fed with wood drawn from the pile outside. Gradually, darkness fell, and the partners unrolled their sleeping bags in front of the fire. Doyle positioned them so that the two zippers were side by side. “We could put them together.”

Bodie didn’t even reply, just zipped the two bags into one big enough to hold them both. “We’re lucky it’s only late September. The weather’s changeable up here, but winter’s the worst. C’mon, sunshine, time to ‘conserve bodily warmth’ the old fashioned way.” 

They crawled into the double bag and Doyle wrapped his arms around his partner, the firelight playing off Bodie’s eyes. “Ready to tell me about some of your mates? Or what it was like up here for Selection?”

Bodie sighed, then nodded. “Sure. Time you knew some of it,” as if preparing to relate the mysteries of the Orient to a complete novice.

“Ooh, can I have a fairy tale?” Ray retorted, imitating a child’s voice.

“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin,” Bodie quipped before he sobered, turning serious. “Couple hundred guys show up at Hereford for each intake, from all the service branches. Everybody thinks they’re tough enough for the SAS. Selection’s designed to prove you’re not. 4am wakeups, eighteen and twenty-hour days with full packs, drills until your arms fall numb, climb this, swim that.”

“So, Jack Craine and Macklin are a Butlins holiday camp by comparison?”

Bodie shook his head. “No, they’re tough, but Selection is as much about mind games as it is about conditioning and endurance. Some guy who screams at you, ‘do it faster, do it again, ten more, squaddie, you’re a lollygagger’ over and over until you can’t stand it. But you do.” 

“See when you’ll break?”

“Exactly. Where’s your breaking point? Too low, home you go.”

Doyle nodded. “So, that’s where you met the others?” 

“Not at first. They weed out sixty, seventy percent, get it down to thirty, forty of the hard boys. You start to learn names then. That’s when I met Shorty and Mike.”

 _The Belfast fatalities._ “Was it obvious you’d all end up in Belfast eventually?” 

Bodie nodded again. Behind him, a log dropped in the fireplace, sending sparks upward, casting a little more light into the room. “You remember what it was like after ’69 when the riots started. The IRA went on the warpath and Northern Ireland was the first stop for anyone enlisted. Besides, we all knew the assignments the SAS got: the toughest.” He paused a moment. “For some, Selection was the middle of a round trip. Paras were in Derry for Bloody Sunday, though I wasn’t.” His eyes drifted down, looking anywhere but Doyle’s eyes. Reluctance shaped his every movement.

Doyle sighed, letting his arms tighten around his partner’s shoulders. “You don’t have to talk about this.”

“I know. And no matter what I tell you, it won’t be enough.” Bodie lifted his eyes to Doyle’s, earnest, pained. “Half of my squad never came back from Belfast, Ray. Griffiths came home in that bloody chair.” His face concealed nothing: dead comrades were the least of what he’d seen. Doyle’s heart clenched in sympathy.

“That bad?”

“That bad.” Bodie leaned his head forward, Doyle’s shoulder a makeshift resting place. 

Doyle nuzzled his face into Bodie’s hair and sighed again. “I remember what it felt like, to lose Sid Parker.” He picked his next words carefully. “It’s hard enough to lose a partner, a man I cared about as a friend. Not sure how I’d feel if I lost eight friends that way.”

“You don’t ever want to know.” Bodie tightened his grip around Doyle’s waist. 

They lay together in silence for a time, Doyle comforting his old friend and new lover, until Bodie spoke again.

“They take the men who are still there, give them terrain exercises, short rations, full packs, the lot. Some guys wash out then, but the ones left are the toughest. Last Selection test is called ‘Endurance’, racing up and down Pen y Fan like a maniac against the clock, no matter the weather. That’s an hour from here as the crow flies, and about five hundred metres farther up.”

Doyle swallowed hard. They’d already climbed four hundred metres higher from the car, by his reckoning. “So you went 'fan dancing'?”

“Yeah. In November.”

 _Christ._ “Snow.”

“And fog, and a sixty-pound pack for my trouble.”

“And that’s how you joined the SAS.”

Bodie nodded, eyes still buried in Doyle’s shoulder. “Thought that was it for me, I’d joined the elite and that would be my life.”

_Something changed, though. Keith Williams?_ “When’d you meet the others, then?” 

“After Selection. Squad training exercises. Initially we were assigned to groups of eight, dropped with a map in the middle of the night, told to get from A to B by dawn, that sort of thing. Later, they'd expand the groups to sixteen. That’s when I got to know Mattingly and Gardner. They were like me and Keith, no parents, only worse; they grew up in children’s homes. Glorified orphanages.”

 _Poor bastards._ “But they became family.”

More nodding against his shoulder. “Some more than others. The ones without family ties clanned together: me, Mattingly, Gardner, Williams. A few of the blokes were married—you met the widows.”

“A few had kids, like that Robbins boy. Terry’s twin, you said.”

Bodie lifted his head, looked at Ray in the pale firelight. “A few. Joining the SAS meant that wives and kids took a back seat. I saw more of Terry than his real life family did.”

Doyle considered, then asked. “So, you met Shorty and Mike at Selection. Then they put you in a squad and that’s where the others came in: orphans, family men, a Quality Street assortment of every kind. How long before you went to Belfast?”

Bodie’s eyes closed. “Not long enough.”

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Into the night, Bodie shared memories of his younger SAS days with his partner. Only eighteen months between when the men passed Selection and were placed into squads until they were dispatched to Northern Ireland. During the brief span before their deployment to Belfast, they received additional training on water (“Jesmond could float like a duck”) or in the air (“then there was the time that we shoved Digweed out of the plane after we told him his spare chute was marked ‘defective’”). Bodie began to fill in the blanks about his squad mates (“Mitchum was so tight, he wouldn’t give you a fright if he was a ghost”) and how some practical jokes backfired (“the barber got the last laugh—trimmed us all so close, we looked like a set of rosary beads when we stood at attention”). Doyle found himself smiling as memories pierced the darkened room, voiced for the first time in years. He began to realize how an utterly self-reliant man like Bodie had created a new family for himself among this band of men. Then he remembered: they were all dead. All except Bodie.

After speaking so long, Bodie went quiet. Then, after a few moments, he whispered, “Can’t lose you, Ray. Can’t.”

 _Lost too many already, by the sound of it._ “You won’t.” Doyle’s arms tightened around the man he had chosen above all others. “That climb wore me out. Let’s get some shut-eye. Talk more tomorrow.”

“All right. G’night, Ray.” Bodie’s arms encircled Doyle’s waist, his head resting at Doyle’s shoulder.

“G’night, Bodie.” But even as Bodie eased into sleepy relaxation, Doyle continued to stare at the ceiling of the tiny hut. _How must it feel to be the last one alive, after all they went through together?_ The question ran round and round in Doyle’s brain, until sleep finally claimed him.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Birdsong wasn’t what woke Doyle Saturday morning, nor a dewy sunrise. Rather, it was a pair of wandering hands coupled with a wandering mouth that belonged to his bedmate. Ray was still a bit foggy as he awakened to find Bodie’s head buried deep in the folds of their shared sleeping bag, and hands making fast work to push his vest out of the way. A tongue generously striped his stomach and was moving southward, at speed, toward an eager reception. Doyle’s pants had been pulled down around his thighs and his morning erection was already primed for action. “Bodie, were you planning to wake me up first?” Doyle asked groggily, as his lover continued laving away, drawing patterns around one hipbone before working back towards the centre. 

“Mmm, maybe,” came the muffled reply. “The important bits were awake.”

Smiling, Doyle shook his head, and felt for Bodie’s shoulders just as a warm hand cupped his balls. “Eh, watch it. I’m a sensitive lad, I’ll have you know.”

“In more ways than one.” But the hand stilled for a moment. “Don’t you want me to touch?”

“Come up for air, Jacques Cousteau.”

Black hair, sticking up in places, emerged from the sleeping bag. Bodie seemed wide awake, too awake for this early in the morning. He still had not relinquished his delicate hold, though.

Ray spoke softly. “I want you to touch me everywhere, you prat. But I’d like to be awake when it’s happening, so I can play too.” Doyle’s hands were already moving, pushing down Bodie’s pants. “Don’t want to get left behind, do I?” A brief touch to Bodie’s cock caused his partner’s eyes to flare wide.

“The secret to a successful partnership, I always say,” he said softly, as Doyle drew his fingertips up sensitive skin toward his navel. “Work together.” Doyle was already pushing Bodie’s white vest up his torso using two hands, drawing it up and over the man’s head, then discarding it toward their boots. 

Doyle’s lips pressed against Bodie’s seconds before mutual groans sounded, and Bodie pressed Doyle over onto his back, thrusting his tongue into Ray’s mouth. Once again, Doyle learned how Bodie’s lips, tongue, and body caused the world to contract to only them, only their desire, only their heat. A broad chest rested atop Doyle’s, its rising and falling rapidly increasing as the kisses turned passionate. Learning through touch, Ray spread his hands along Bodie’s ribs and then wrapped strong arms around his partner, stroking his back, sweeping palms up and down, shoulders to arse, pausing to caress wherever Ray wanted, fingers gently and then firmly studying his lover’s body with total dedication. Bodie might try to command their kisses, but Ray’s hands attempted to fuse the two men into a single flesh. Abruptly, Bodie lifted his head, looking down at the dazed man beneath him, and exhaled, “You’re magnificent,” just before diving back in for another prolonged kiss. 

At the next pause for breath, Doyle replied, “You’re that and more.” Then he pushed Bodie onto his back and began tracing a line of kisses down Bodie’s throat, chest, and stomach with single-minded determination.

Bodie raised his head just as Doyle’s fingertips began tracing faintly around the crinkled skin of his balls. “Hey, that’s what I wanted to do.” 

As he breathed warm air over the exposed tip of Bodie’s cock, Ray paused to say, “Not stopping you.” Then he lowered his mouth and closed his lips around the thick cock, gently moving his mouth up and down in tandem with fingertips that teased Bodie’s ball sac, circling, stimulating, restrained strokes that barely whispered against his skin.

Bodie’s head thunked back against the floor. “Later’s fine too,” as he began floating away on a rising tide of blissful sensations. The cock in Doyle’s mouth was already erect when he began, but he licked, sucked, and kissed it as if encouragement were needed. Beneath him, he could feel Bodie’s legs tense each time Ray drew him closer to climax, then the thighs relaxed when Ray slowed down his movements. He paused, tending to the ruddy prick long enough to tongue his way around both balls a few times, drawing clear moans from his partner each time he pressed his tongue flat against the pair of them. Then Doyle resumed giving Bodie’s cock all the loving attention he could muster, working his tongue up and down along the ridged underside in between taking it into his mouth for some vigorous sucking. Every time his nose nudged into the black curls at the base of that cock, Ray inhaled the strong musk he associated with his partner. Every Bodie-centred dream he’d suppressed in those CI5 showers came back to Ray one hundred times stronger now that he could actually splay his hands on Bodie’s hips and take that cock in his mouth, deeply, hungrily. Doyle moaned as his lips took in inch after inch of the man he’d secretly yearned for.

Doyle’s moans began to mingle with Bodie’s, who thrust his fingers into brown curls and stroked them tenderly. The passion that Ray put into this act was not lost on Bodie, who could feel the tense desire flowing from his partner’s hands and lips straight through his skin. No one had ever worshipped his cock as if it were the be-all and end-all of existence, but Doyle might as well have used skywriting to make his feelings plain. Bodie responded as best he could, fingers spread against his lover’s scalp. Bodie wanted more time, more of everything, but Doyle’s intensity was hurtling him toward the edge with no way back. “Christ, Ray, you’re…” he began, as his balls tightened, pulled up taut against his cock. Clenching fingers in Ray’s hair was all the warning Bodie could offer before his body gave out, spurting his pleasure into the warm mouth that surrounded him, lips sealed tight around his blood-warm skin. 

Swallowing, then gently pulling his mouth away from the over-sensitive skin of his lover, Doyle moved upwards enough to rest his head against Bodie’s stomach for a moment, pleased that he’d succeeded in giving Bodie an early morning diversion. Then he moved back up, wrapping an arm about his partner, placing his head next to Bodie’s where he could watch him, a face gone lax with abandon. Thick lashes finally lifted, and languid blue eyes turned his way. “Diolch yn fawr.” At Doyle’s puzzled look, Bodie leaned over to kiss him, pulling him close as he lightly nibbled at one lip, and whispered, “’Thank you very much’ in Welsh.”

“You’re welcome,” Doyle replied, just as a now-familiar warm palm pressed against his cock, fingers wrapping around his flesh. 

Bodie’s response drove Doyle to the brink two times, pausing between kisses to gently tweak an earlobe or lick Doyle’s neck, tormenting him by slowing down just when Ray desperately wanted something faster. “You in a hurry?” Bodie asked, after a second round of watching Ray’s face scrunch up at being so close, so very very close—and denying him.

“No, turnabout’s fair play, I made you wait for it,” came the response, though with a ragged edge to Ray’s voice.

Bodie kissed Doyle reverently. “Just want you to feel as good as you made it for me. Indulge you a bit.” His fingers, curled to encase his lover’s cock, resumed their strong pumping motion, putting Doyle right back on edge in an instant. 

Doyle began keening, tiny sounds as if he were in pain, but he leaned closer to Bodie even as he pressed his forehead against Bodie’s cheek, his skin hot to the touch. The tautness in his muscles, every one gone rigid as climax approached, was apparent.

“Now?” Bodie asked as his hand became a blur around hot, tight flesh, working Ray’s cock within his rounded palm. His answer came when a head bobbed quickly up and down against Bodie’s cheek, an insistent yes. Bodie redoubled his efforts, moving the taut skin up and down as quickly as his hand could manage. Then, just as his stamina seemed to be flagging, a series of rapid pulses within his hand and warmth around his fingers signalled the end of his labour. Ray’s body drooped, every muscle freed from its tensest torment, release flooding every nerve.

“Wake me up however you like,” Ray mumbled next to his ear, as he draped himself half over Bodie and promptly drifted off to sleep. 

Bodie smiled slightly, arms wrapped around the man, kissing his temple and pulling the edge of the sleeping bag up to cover their exposed shoulders. “I might at that,” he replied quietly, and closed his eyes once more.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

The second time he awoke, it was birdsong that roused Doyle from slumber. His body had achieved that deep sense of relaxation that only comes after a satisfying orgasm, and he wasn’t eager to do much. On the other hand, who knew what Bodie needed to accomplish before they left Wales? _Have to drive back to London tomorrow, or Cowley will have our hides._ Rolling his head to one side, he gazed blearily at his partner, who was likewise slowly waking. Their eyes met.

“What’s the plan?” Ray asked.

Bodie rolled his shoulders, then turned on his side, head in hand, to answer. “Hike, build a fire, drink some scotch, hike back, sleep it off.”

“Easy-peasy, except for the part where we’re hiking after we drink too much. Not keen to break a leg up here.”

“Never said we’d drink it all in one go.” Bodie snorted. “Hike, build a fire, drink _some_ scotch, hike back, _drink the rest_ ,” he amended, “and sleep it off.”

“Any reason we can’t stay here and drink the lot?”

“’Cause we have to do it there, not here.”

“Do what where?”

“Drink the first toast on the other side of the ridge line.”

 _Oh._ “Returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak.”

Bodie nodded. “Build the fire, make the toast, and get back here before nightfall. Can sit up to drink the rest if we want, safe inside the warm.”

“And that’ll satisfy the pact?”

“Didn’t have to come back to Wales to drink it in the first place. But I wanted to,” he said, a bit stubbornly.

“Right. Well, we’ve let part of the morning get away from us, so we’d best get moving. How far, there and back?”

“Ten miles, give or take. There’s a gap we can use, won’t have to go much higher, but the terrain gets rocky on the other side.”

“Worse than yesterday?” _What does he think I am, part Welsh sheep?_

“Worse.”

_Fantastic._

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Morning rituals were performed in haste: clothes donned, coffee downed, and rucksacks repacked with barest essentials meant the two were out of the hut and on their way before long. As they crossed the meadow towards the mountain ridge, they ate the first meal of the day, sharing apples, cheese, raisins, and water between them. Bodie kept looking skyward, thin gray clouds wrapped around the mountain ridge ahead of them, moving slowly eastward, with bits of sun breaking through at intervals.

“Rain later?”

“Hard to tell up here. But if it starts, we’re turning right around and going back to that hut. We can come back in spring if we have to.”

“You know the weather here better than I do,” Ray admitted.

Bodie shook his head. “I know what Griffiths taught me, but even David could make a mistake.” He glanced over at his partner. “It’s just us, Ray. No backup and no room for error. I won’t risk us, not even for me old mates.”

Ray reached out a hand in reassurance, laid it on Bodie’s shoulder briefly as they continued to walk to the meadow’s edge.

Bodie said, “It’s about ninety minutes to the crest, then thirty minutes to descend the other side to where I want to go.”

“Need to take any firewood with us, or will there be what we need when we get there?”

“Nothing there. We gather what we need on the way.” And true to his word, as the meadow gave way to a small grove of trees, Bodie gathered twigs, some larger sticks, and a few drier pieces of deadfall, placing them in his rucksack. Doyle did the same as the two men continued forward to the rocky slope. As they began their ascent, moving between the rocks, Doyle could see the worn spaces of footsteps where Bodie took them. Observers, he remembered. 

He addressed his question to Bodie’s back. “Do observers watch the recruits in every phase of Selection?”

The answer returned faintly, as Bodie continued picking his way upwards through the rocks, slowly ascending the side of the mountain. “Pretty much. Recruits don’t know it, but the SAS plants observers at intervals; they radio in the progress being made, watch for men developing physical or mental weaknesses, problems like that.” 

“So when the men are told to go from A to B, they are watched all the way?”

“Depends. Some plots they assign, there are observation posts practically built in to the terrain. Dug out, suspended, camouflaged any number of ways. One-man tunnels. Treehouses rigged at thirty feet up. Recruits are too busy meeting the timing requirements to figure out where the watchers are. This one’s a little different, though.”

“Why’s that?” 

“It’s far above the tree line, so not many places to hide. There’s a high ledge above the place where recruits usually call it quits for the night and set up camp. It’s sort of like looking down from a balcony. But there’s no camouflage on that ledge. It’s exposed on three sides. You’ll see.” With steady, repeated steps, Bodie led them higher and higher along the faint observer path, one used over many years to reach the top of the ridge line. 

After an hour, he called a halt. “Less oxygen up here. Have to refuel, too.” He passed Doyle a Cadbury’s and tore the wrapper off of one himself, then looked upwards again at the clouds swirling overhead.

Doyle shook his head. “Any excuse for some sweets.” But he bit into the chocolate bar and began eating his with relish. The climb thus far had not been easy.

Bodie looked back at his partner. “Gotta mix slow and fast burn foods, Ray. The cheese and raisins we ate before, they’ll keep us going to midday, but this”—brandishing the remains of his Fruit and Nut bar—”is actually ideal. Nuts burn slow, but chocolate burns fast, it’ll give us a boost for the last part of this climb. Eat up!” And Bodie chewed his way through the remaining squares of chocolate before pulling out his canteen and taking a few swigs of water to wash down the rest.

Five minutes further up the trail, Doyle could feel the extra energy surging through his body. _Next thing you know, he’ll convince Macklin to hand out bonbons._ But the added power made reaching the top seem easier.

The gap in the ridge was not one Doyle could see until they were practically on top of it. “How the fuck did anybody find this?” he marvelled, pausing to crawl over a particularly awkward set of rocks, imitating Bodie’s movements.

“Probably the shepherd family from the meadow below, chasing a lost sheep,” Bodie replied, as they began the ridiculously steep descent down the other side of the mountain. But Bodie paused when he no longer heard Doyle’s feet moving, edging down the rocky terrain. Gazing upward, he saw his unmoving partner looking mildly stunned at the surrounding peaks that made up the range, and the series of ledges they still had to negotiate. 

Doyle’s face turned a bit pale, as the emptiness of the space all around them started to become overwhelming. _Why the hell am I here?_ He gripped his handholds a bit tighter but made no effort to move.

“The trick is to look at the rocks around you, not out into the air. Focus on the rock, ignore the air, Ray.” Bodie reached up and grasped Ray’s hand, squeezed it with his own, and Doyle’s brief moment of vertigo burned away just as sunlight peaked through the clouds once more. He took a step or two down, nodded to Bodie, and the men resumed their cautious descent through the stones, scree, and rubble dotting the faint trail downwards.

The trip downwards was slow, as Bodie tested every step before he committed his weight to the rock-strewn pathway. More than once he sat down rather than try to walk upright, edging his way along a section before standing again. In all things, Doyle imitated him. At last, they turned a sharp corner to their stony footpath, and Doyle immediately understood how observers could see but not be seen from below.

Before him, a deep fissure had been worn into the rock face, creating an opening much like a ‘mouth’ set into the mountain wall. As he and Bodie moved into that mouth, they had to crouch at first, but then the roof curved up over their heads eventually allowing them to stand, but just barely, if they were close to the mouth’s widest opening. Towards the back, the fissure narrowed again, as the roof gradually sloped down to meet the floor of the shelter. The track they had followed entered the shallow cave from one side, and apparently exited out the far side. 

Bodie turned and smiled at him, slowly lowering his pack to the ground, then rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. “Cosy, eh? All mod cons.” He started to help Doyle out of his rucksack before Ray could answer. Doyle could only stare at him.

“So this is where you go when you want to ‘get away from it all’?”

“Leave your pack, my son, and come take a look.” 

Ray dropped his rucksack next to Bodie’s and followed him over to the lip of the shallow cave’s mouth, taking care to stand back from the edge. But then he could really see what Bodie meant.

One hundred metres below lay a bare patch of ground, ringed by stony walls. A narrow path curved around the mountain below them, leading to the flat site on one side. Beyond that space, a few low bushes gave way to a sheer cliff face that disappeared around another corner. From their position in the cave’s mouth, Doyle realized that the SAS could watch as men below set up camp for the night and, with the curving mountain walls, probably hear every word spoken, too. But Bodie was pointing out, not down.

“Look, Ray.” And Doyle looked toward the horizon. Smoky clouds blotted out bits and pieces of the view, but the Brecon Beacons were now laid out before him in all their glory. From their current stopping point, he could see many peaks, most of them lower, and only a very few at nearly the same height. About a mile away, one was higher. Bodie pointed toward it. “Pen y Fan.”

“Where you went fan dancing in the snow.” Doyle looked across at Bodie, expecting a grimace, but a wide grin met him instead.

“Never been so happy to get off a mountainside in me life.”

“Thought you liked mountain climbing?”

“Not that kind of climbing. Give me the Pennines or the Alps any day. Leastwise there you have clear lines of ascent, safety harnesses, a partner to climb with. Fan dancing is a one-man op, and the timed element means safety lines are impossible.”

“They have many fatalities?” Doyle wondered at Bodie’s willingness to risk his neck for a job.

“Every so often. None for the past few years.” Bodie turned away from the cave mouth and moved to open their backpacks, pulling out the sticks and deadfall they’d collected. With twigs in hand, he settled on his haunches and used dry leaves plus matches to get a tiny fire going, though he was careful to shield it from the breeze blowing by the cave’s entrance. The flames caught, and he added more twigs before he sat down on the ground beside the fire and pulled his rucksack nearer. Doyle sat at Bodie’s left, crossing his legs as he joined Bodie on the cave’s rocky ground.

“Grub first.” Bodie pulled sandwiches, fruit, cheese, and water from Doyle’s pack, handing over some to Doyle before tearing into his own food with a will. Doyle wondered what the fire was for, since they didn’t need one for their food.

As if in answer to Doyle’s unspoken question, Bodie reached into his pack and pulled out the bundle of envelopes that Doyle recognized from the solicitor’s office, all addressed to ‘The Last Bastard’. He also had the photograph of his squad, which he placed on the ground. He flipped through the envelopes, setting aside a few based on the handwriting, and looked ready to consign the rest to the flames. Of the ones destined for the flames, one on top had a spiky handwriting that Doyle knew so well.

“Wait a minute. I want to see what you wrote.” 

Bodie looked at him curiously. “Why?”

“Because it’s from you, your younger self.” 

Bodie looked ready to argue, then changed his mind and handed it over with ill grace. He seemed prepared to burn most of the rest, when Doyle laid a hand on his arm.

“Why not read them all? Aren’t you curious what they say?”

“They’re from dead men, Ray. Not sure I want my last impression of them to be what they wrote when we were all so green.” But Bodie was considering it, Doyle could tell, so he pressed the matter.

“How about, you read them to me? You’ve been telling me stories about these guys for days, this would let me ‘hear’ their voices for meself.” 

Slowly, Bodie nodded in agreement, and he took one from atop the thick bundle. Slicing open the envelope, he pulled the paper out. “From Griffiths.” He scanned the letter, a moment of pain flashed across his face, then cleared his throat and began. “Well, whoever you are, you’d best remember us all. Don’t know how I went, but I hope it was quick and painless.” Bodie paused, and they glanced at each other, knowing Griffiths’s end was anything but. “If you get the chance, send me Mum a card to tell her you knew me once. If it’s you Dedham, reading this, you still owe me twenty quid from that bar outside Karachi. If it’s you Mitchum, you’re a right bastard and I’m glad I finally told you so.” Bodie grinned, concluding, “And Bodie, if you’re reading this, I hope you’ve finally learned when a man’s bluffing with a pair of threes.”

Doyle smiled as Bodie put the sheet of paper down. “Griffiths cleaned you out at poker?”

“Yeah. He won most times, even when he had a crap hand. David could’ve taken Mrs Lendon on a good day, he was that sharp. Learned a lot from him about bluffing.”

“Let’s have the next, then.”

Bodie opened the envelopes one by one, feeding the fire with the envelopes but putting the sheets of paper to the side after reading them. Mitchum’s was so mean-spirited (“hope you recall the better men who died before you”) that it made Doyle wince. Others simply resorted to name-calling that Bodie took in his stride: Dedham called the man reading his letter a wanker, Jesmond claimed the 'Last Bastard' had to be a prick, Robbins called him an imposter (“since it ought to be me reading this, you ponce”), and Digweed went for “twat”. The worse the insult, the happier it seemed to make Bodie, for it made vivid his old comrades and their casual profanity. 

The rest of the letters were tough to get through with their pleas to call or contact wives, girlfriends, children, parents—something Doyle and Bodie had already accomplished, but now were reliving in requests from dead men. Doyle found himself remembering every house they had visited, every envelope Bodie thrust into a reluctant hand. The request from Robbins to visit his son caused Doyle and Bodie to go silent, simply looking at each other. Finally, only four letters remained. 

Doyle had figured out the authors by process of elimination: Shorty Thompson, Mike Jennings, Keith Williams, and Bodie himself. He watched as Bodie slit open the first. He unfolded the paper and sat there, reading it to himself. Twice, he paused to look away, out the mouth of the cave to the mountains beyond. His pauses made Doyle wonder what the paper contained. Without speaking, Bodie handed the letter over to his partner. It wasn’t long.

_Spend the money on something that matters, but don’t look back. We’re in the past. You still have a future. Grief is wasted on the dead—we had our younger days and they were grand, but we made our choices and don’t need your pity. Enjoy life while you have it. I have. Mike_

Doyle asked what he’d been wondering for days now. “How’d he save your life, Bodie?”

Bodie looked down at his hands and said slowly, “Though he was behind me, Mike saw the wire just as Dedham tripped it. He threw me toward an open door but it meant he took the brunt of the falling wall across his back. Blunt force trauma to the skull and two broken vertebrae. If he’d lived, he’d have been like Griffiths.” Bodie swallowed hard and lowered his head some more.

Doyle reached out a hand, resting it on his partner’s knee. Nothing he could say would bring Bodie comfort. After a time, Bodie lifted another letter from the short stack, opened it, and let the envelope fall from his hand. His mouth curved in a smirk as he read the looping words, and again, he passed it to Doyle once he was done.

_Dear Last Bastard, I know one thing about you: I put you on your arse at least once. Don’t forget what I taught you about breaking choke holds and if you have any brains at all, you’ve found a sensei to keep you sharp in hand to hand. Don’t get sloppy, or I’ll come back from the dead and put you on your arse again. Shorty  
PS Slogans are cheap. Life deserves better._

The PS puzzled Doyle and he glanced over to Bodie for an explanation. “It’s something Shorty always said about the SAS slogan, or any slogan. What he meant was, words can be… misleading. Don’t be fooled by a few words thrown together by some ad agency.” He cocked his head to one side and added, “What he really meant was, reality is what counts. Nothing else. Shorty couldn’t escape his nickname, but he reminded us more than once that a name didn’t define him.” Doyle found himself nodding, understanding.

Bodie put the letter aside and opened the third one, swallowing as he did so.

Doyle watched him read the last words Keith Williams had to communicate, wondering how they would affect his friend. It took only seconds to find out: Bodie’s fingers crumpled the edge of the paper, before he passed it over to Doyle and turned away, staring out at the blue sky.

_Bastard, Tradition is we all write these things. So I have one message for you: goodbye. Keith_

Doyle’s first thought was that the brevity was cruel, almost cutting. But then, Keith didn’t know who the Last Bastard would be. Had he known it would be Bodie, he might have written something different. Still, it was probably the shortest message of any left by the men. “Keith was a man of few words, I take it.”

Bodie looked back at him, gnawed on his lip a little, thinking. “He was. Every squad’s like that, a mix of talkers and clams. Keith was the quietest one of all of us. Don’t think I ever heard him tell a joke. He fit the stereotype, strong and silent.”

Doyle wanted to ask more about Keith, but he saw Bodie getting ready to dump the letters into the fire. “Hey, wait, what about yours?” The one unopened letter among the rest contained young-Bodie’s thoughts and Doyle really wanted to know what that envelope contained.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Come on Bodie, it can’t be that embarrassing.” Doyle held out a hand palm side up, expecting it to be filled. Bodie’s cheeks flared pink but he passed the envelope along. Doyle sliced the flap open, pulled out the paper, and started reading.

_Last Bastard, In Selection they taught us to prepare for contingencies, so I’m putting that into practice.  
Jennings, buy hearing aids and go help your dad. You’re lucky he understands you.  
Shorty, character isn’t measured by height. I appreciated learning from the best.  
Williams, Gardner & Mattingly, family is not just who you’re born with. Thanks for teaching me that.  
Farraday, if you’re still enlisted, for the love of all that’s holy, stop whistling.  
Jesmond, learn to buy the next round. Friendship is worth it.  
Mitchum, stop being a prick.  
Wilson & Dedham, thanks for telling me where Cadbury’s finest comes from. Think of me when you’re enjoying some nuts and caramel, eh?  
Morecambe and Wise, take your kiddies to Anfield and give ‘em a red scarf from their Uncle Bodie. Liverpool for the Cup!  
Robbins, get your son to stop rooting for Manchester City. It’s embarrassing. Ta.  
Digweed, always check the chute yourself. Take it from a jump master.  
Griffiths, you Welsh bastard, thanks for telling us about the Beacons. Still owe you one jumper with holes fixed._

Doyle looked up from the spiky handwriting to see Bodie with his head drooped into his hands. “What?”

“Can’t explain,” came the muffled reply, but Doyle could see his partner rubbing his cheeks with the palms of his hands, scrubbing away moisture. Lifting his face to stare at the tiny fire, Ray could make out the pale pink rims surrounding his eyes. “Hard to believe they’re not going to make camp on the patch below, all of them together again.” Bodie shook his head slightly. “You can’t know, Ray, but they seemed indestructible to me. I was younger than most of them. Doesn’t seem right I’m sitting here. The Last Bastard.”

Ray put a hand on Bodie’s knee. “None of us are indestructible, mate.”

“I know, I know. I was greener than most, to believe something that daft.” He shifted, to look Doyle squarely in the eye. “You wanted to know how they died. So I’ll tell you.” But Bodie paused, feeding the fire more sticks and small pieces of wood, pulling the bottle of Macallan from his backpack.

“You already know how Dedham died, the tripwire that killed him and crushed David’s legs. It would’ve killed me but for Mike being an idiot, shoving me out of the way, getting killed instead.”

_Thank you, Mike Jennings. Thank you._

“Shorty went back into the building and pulled David from the wreckage. No one thought he was alive but Shorty wasn’t budging until we checked. Buildings with one booby trap usually have more than one, but Shorty wouldn’t leave without seeing for himself.”

_With odds like that, he probably would have died for nothing._

“Not sure whether David thanked him or not, given how he ended up.” Bodie stared at the flames as he went on. “They moved us from Belfast to Derry after that. Sniper fire took out Shorty, on patrol in the Bogside one night. Never found who did it.” 

Out of the curling smoke, Doyle seemed to see hints of men’s faces that burned off in the midday sun.

“Wilson was helping a civilian who’d taken a bullet to the leg a few months later. Crouched over, covering a wound with gauze, y’know?” Bodie glanced up, the pain written across his features. “Fucking helping a civilian. Bullet through the carotid.”

Doyle stared back at him, unable to stop watching as Bodie soldiered on. 

“Mattingly and Gardner died in Armagh. Firefight with an IRA cell near an old barn we were tipped off about. They both bled out before anyone could get to them.”

_And that left you and Keith of the orphans on the squad. Good god._

“Farraday and Robbins died when they cycled us back to Belfast. Two bloody days before we got to leave hell, and a car bomb killed the pair of them as they were walking out of a pub in a ‘safe zone.’ Safe my arse. No place safe in Northern Ireland.” The more names he spoke, the more pronounced Bodie’s accent became, until the Scouse was thick and broad.

_Eight men dead, another stuck in a chair, and nightmares to chase the rest of you for a lifetime._

Slowly, Doyle asked, “Did they keep the squad together, after that? Or break you up?”

Bodie went back to tending the fire. “Together. Morecambe and Wise died near Mirbat, in Oman. We always talked footie, y’know? Three lads from Lancashire, all rooting for the Reds whenever we got the chance. Cheering like mad for Keegan.” He pulled the Macallan over to his knee, adding, “After they died, Jesmond and Mitchum decided they’d had enough of a ‘shilling a day’ for Queen and Country. They didn’t reenlist, high-tailed it for Africa and tried my old line of work, soldier of fortune. Got some work on the Libya-Egypt border. That’s where Mitchum died, and good riddance.”

“How’d you find out about him?”

“Jesmond came back to London, I ran into him on the street. Had a drink for old time’s sake, he filled me in. Then Williams heard Jesmond bought it in a traffic accident. Silly sod.”

“Yeah, must seem a stupid way to die after all you’ve seen.”

“Dying is dying, Ray. You’re still dead.” Bodie’s voice seemed quieter. He reached in his pack and pulled out a pair of small silver cups and twisted open the seal on the bottle of scotch. “Digweed survived it all, stayed in longer than any of us, but he got a good offer to become a foreman in a construction firm in Liverpool. Remember that crane accident, a year or so back?”

Doyle dredged it from memory. “Something about a crane’s arm shearing off, smashing down through some scaffolding on a building that was nearly finished. The men got knocked off?”

“Yeah. That was him. And then Keith.” Bodie’s voice had gone soft.

_King Billy’s biker gang hellbent on violence._ “You didn’t see much of him, did you?”

“Nah. Every time I looked at Keith, I saw Mattingly or Gardner. Got so’s how I didn’t return his calls, even when I had the time.” Bodie shook his head, disgust twisting his lips. Then he glanced over at Doyle, offering, “We weren’t together long. He liked birds better than blokes, really; always knew I was second skimmings, like.”

Impulsively, Ray leaned toward Bodie, taking his weight on his hands so he could put his face close to Bodie’s. “More the fool him, may he rest in peace. I know quality when I see it, and you’re not second skimmings to me.” He planted a kiss on Bodie’s cheek, then leaned back, his earlier jealousy washed away with Bodie’s words.

“So that’s the squad. Scoundrels and scallywags, the lot of them.” Bodie poured a splash of scotch into both silver cups then passed one to Doyle.

“What’s your toast, Last Bastard?” Doyle waited to be told, smiling across at the man he now thought of as lover.

Bodie raised his cup slightly, in the direction of the cave’s mouth, and said, “Only one way to toast all of them together. Who dares wins.” And he drank off the liquid in a single gulp.

“Who dares wins.” The liquor burned, but then the sweetness hit—a full, rich taste, fruits mixed in with something that reminded him of caramel. He tried to see if Bodie was tasting the same thing, but the man’s face was hard, not pleased with what he’d drunk, so Doyle said nothing.

After stowing the bottle and cups back in his rucksack, Bodie gathered up the sheets of paper, ready for one last bonfire.

“Sure you want to do that?”

“I’m sure. I won’t forget them, even if the words are gone.” Bodie dumped the letters into the fire, and the flames briefly flared. He prepared to do the same with the photograph.

“You should keep that, y’know. I like seeing how you looked back then.”

Bodie looked at him, as if to ask ‘are you serious’ but he must have seen something in Doyle’s face that stopped him. He tucked the photograph into his rucksack, though, instead of consigning it to the flames.

The two men gathered some loose dirt from the rear of the cave and dropped it on the fire, smothering it. Bodie took another look out of the cave mouth, down to the patch below, then out toward the mountains in the west. “We’re going to have to move, Ray. That line of clouds doesn’t look good. Want to make shelter while we have the chance.” He paused, though, and kissed Doyle, wrapping him in strong arms for a moment. “C’mon.”

The two men picked their way back up the trail to the ridge line with care, turning to watch the approaching cloud bank at intervals. As they started descending the other side in the direction of the hafod, Doyle asked, “How’d you learn so much about weather in Wales? SAS teach you?”

“Some, but most of it came from David. He loved climbing the Beacons, even as a young nipper. He had better outdoor skills than any of us.” Then Bodie began to tell a story about a jumper stolen from Griffiths that he’d snagged on some barbed wire behind a barracks, and the rest of the descent passed as one story gave way to others. 

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

They reached the hafod as the afternoon light was beginning to fade. It hadn’t rained on their descent, but two climbs in one day made both men hungry. Dinner was stew, thick with vegetables and a tin of tomatoes added for flavour. While Doyle was chopping and adding things to the pot, Bodie stripped down to an undershirt and jeans then went outside. Soon, a steady thunk-pause-thunk-pause began to sound nearby. With the stew simmering, Doyle went outside too. There he found Bodie replacing firewood on the pile they had borrowed from, next to the hut. A light sheen of sweat turned the hair on his forearms dark, and the top part of his vest was wet from exertion. Doyle’s cock took a distinct interest in the picture presented. He took the axe out of Bodie’s hands and replaced it on the sheltered hook above the replenished stack of wood. Doyle wound his arms around Bodie’s waist, burying his nose into the crook of his lover’s throat and inhaling deeply. He muttered, “You need to come inside.”

“Dinner’s ready?” 

“Soon. But you still need to come inside.” Doyle lifted his head, letting Bodie see his eyes for a moment, before he leaned forward and claimed the man’s lips, hungry. All he wanted to convey was in that kiss.

When they next surfaced for air, Bodie wordlessly grasped Ray’s hand and tugged him toward the cabin door. 

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Their ‘appetizer’, as Bodie called it, made the meal that followed somehow taste better. Eating stew mopped up with thick slices of bread, followed by hunks of cheese for Ray and more chocolate for Bodie, allowed Doyle some time to think about all he’d seen and heard that day. 

“How’d you know about that cave?” he asked, as he rebuilt the fire and heated water for coffee.

“Was an observer myself, once I made sergeant. Try sticking it out in that cave in November some time, you’ll never take being warm for granted ever again.” At Doyle’s curious look, Bodie reminded him, “No fires. So the men below don’t know you’re there.”

Doyle asked about another thing that had bothered him. “Why didn’t we go down to the patch of ground where your squad made camp? Instead of staying up top, looking down?”

Bodie shrugged, pulling the Macallan out of his pack, the cups and photograph too. “It’s another hour to descend there, which would’ve meant adding two hours to our day. Lose the margin for error if we did that. Besides, if it rained, we could shelter in the cave until it blew over. No real shelter down there.”

Doyle remembered what Bodie had said earlier, _“Didn’t have to come back to Wales to drink it in the first place. But I wanted to.”_

“And why that patch of ground? Your squad must’ve camped a dozen places up in these mountains during training.”

Bodie nodded. “True. But that’s where we made the decision to have the tontine.”

Ah. Curiosity made him ask, “When was the snap taken?”

“Just after we came back from that training run. The brass had decided we’d do as a unit, so we were stuck with each other from then on. Must’ve had observers on us for a few weeks, realized we wouldn’t kill each other—though it was a near run thing with Mitchum in the squad.” He passed a cup of scotch over to Ray, and the two of them settled in front of the fire for the night.

“Do you plan to drink to Mitchum? Seeing as he was a horse’s arse?” Ray pulled the photograph over and asked, “Which one is he?”

Bodie poked at a face on the left, and answered, “Yeah. ‘s tradition. To Mitchum, a right prick.” And they swallowed their drinks, before Bodie reloaded the cups.

The toasts continued, interspersed with feeding the fire and a few protracted bouts of kissing. After the second lengthy silence filled with caramel-sweet kisses, Bodie murmured, “Not sure they’d imagine a Last Bastard snogging like this between toasts.”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really. C’mere.” And Bodie drugged himself with Doyle’s lips once more.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

It was quarter to one before they reached the end of the bottle, both of them a bit worse for wear after enjoying the contents. “Think we should keep it. For your mates,” Doyle slurred. He’d been keeping his eyes open only with great effort for the last hour. He was slumped inside their joint sleeping bag with an arm across Bodie’s chest.

“Nah,” Bodie replied. “Don’t need it to remember.” His words were slow with all the exaggerated precision of the mostly but not completely drunk.

Doyle’s cup rolled over to rest against Bodie’s, in the shadow of the empty bottle. “G’night, Bodie.” He leaned over to kiss his mate but missed his mouth and hit an ear instead. “Love you.” And with that, his head rolled on to Bodie’s shoulder and he began breathing heavily, limbs gone boneless in sleep.

His soft words made Bodie look at his curls with widened eyes. Could Doyle really mean it? Before Bodie had much chance to ponder what his partner’s last words meant, the combination of fatigue and alcohol finally caught up with him. A long and dreamless sleep carried them both through until dawn.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Sunday, and the last day of their leave before Cowley would go back to commanding all their time. Just after daybreak, Bodie crawled out of the bag long enough to relieve himself outside, then crawled back in next to Ray. The brown curls covered half his partner’s face, but what could be seen showed a man completely relaxed, at ease with himself. Bodie kept watch over his lover until a faint curl to the man’s lip gave away his secret. “You’re not asleep anymore.”

Doyle opened his eyes to slits and looked at Bodie. “Makes two of us. Whatever shall we do with ourselves?” The suggestion in the depths of green eyes was part promise, part dare.

Bodie leaned over and kissed the man with nonchalant ease. “Two options come to mind.”

“Yeah? Will I like ‘em?”

“Hope so. Fuck-breakfast-drive, or breakfast-fuck-drive.” He gave Doyle a hungry glance that suggested either way, Doyle was on the menu.

“What’s for breakfast?” Doyle teased, already reaching for Bodie, pulling him against his chest.

“Same as yesterday,” Bodie replied, just before Ray rolled him on his back, pinning Bodie beneath him, rubbing their hardening cocks against each other. Bodie gasped and reached up to pull Doyle’s mouth down for a thorough investigation. “God, I want you,” were the last words spoken by either man after that.

Breakfast was late.

*** ******* *** ******* *** *******

Ray took a long look around the spartan room, embedding the details in his mind before they departed. The cabin fire out, the woodpile restored and even augmented a little, and their packs loaded up, ready for the trip down the mountainside—all was in readiness. He looked over at Bodie, who was glancing at his watch. 

“It’s barely ninety minutes back to London, even on a Sunday. No rush,” Ray reassured him.

Bodie nodded. “I know. But we’ve got some talking to do.” He shouldered his way past Doyle, heading for the outside.

“It’s 10am, and my head is still a bit tender from all that scotch. Go easy, okay?” Doyle shut the door behind him, and the two set off across the meadow for the last time. “What’re we talking about?”

“First, what’re we going to tell the Old Man?” Bodie risked a sideways glance at his partner. “He’s canny like a fox. He’ll figure it out.”

The ‘it’ in this case needed no definition: the new dimension to their partnership, most recently explored through the morning in their combined sleeping bag. Doyle’s stride lengthened to match his partner’s, falling in beside him. He let out a long sigh. “He might not care. Remember the Pellin business? Hates injustice to any group.” But even Doyle realized that was optimistic. “CI5 is his baby. Not going to let it get tarred with negative associations, is he?”

Bodie pursed his lips, then blew out a breath. He looked over at Ray. “The Cow took me, knowing I’m bisexual. Nairn told him flat out when he recruited me.” Then he added, “Gave me a chance, Ray. He deserves the truth.”

The break in the mountain wall where the downward path started was coming into view ahead of them. “Dunno as he deserves anything. ‘S our private lives we’re talking about, yours and mine, not his,” Doyle replied.

Bodie put a hand onto his arm, pausing them in the field of dying grass. “Then maybe I want to tell him.”

Ray stopped, reviewing the conversation in his head. Bodie might be contrary when he was taking the piss, but not for something that really mattered. This mattered. “You really want him to know.”

Bodie nodded, a sharp downward jerk of the chin. “No hiding. He doesn’t like it, we leave.” He turned, resuming his way to the mountainside. 

“And do what?” Doyle asked, his contrariness getting the better of him.

“Set up on our own, business and personal security or something else. Mattingly and Gardner and my shares, that’s 750 quid. With the 500 in interest, we’ve got nigh on £1300 from the tontine to see us right. Give us time to get established, drum up a little business, spread the word around.”

Doyle caught Bodie’s arm, just before they reached the mountain and they were forced to hike in single file. He turned his partner and asked, “That what you _want_ to do with it? Set us up in a shop?”

Bodie paused, then shook his head. “I’m hoping the Cow will still want us, keep us a team, keep sending us out for CI5. I’d rather put the money in the bank, use it someday to buy us a place for our golden years.” He smiled at Ray, a hint of persuasion in his eyes. “Sound good?”

_Forever. He wants us forever._

Ray’s face split into a toothy grin. “Sounds perfect in fact.” He gestured back at the hut they’d just left. “Wonder how much they want for that place?” Bodie grinned widely, then turned back to start his descent along the trail to the car.

Doyle wasn’t ready to go just yet. “You gonna break it to him?”

Bodie whirled, indignantly quirking his eyebrows. “Me? Why should I break it to him?”

Green eyes taunted him. “You’re the one who propositioned me in Liverpool.”

Bodie briefly crossed his eyes in mock disgust. “Like you didn’t want me to! You’ve been avoiding me in the showers at CI5 for years, mate. This one’s yours.” He took the nearest steps downward, leading them ten feet along the trail, then he paused, looking back over his shoulder, his lips curling upward. Ray stopped too. Neither man could stop the smiles from breaking into full-blown grins.

“Tomorrow morning? Together?”

“Together.”


End file.
